Freedom camping review needed again in Marlborough

Marlborough’s new freedom camping rules will have to go under the microscope all over again, as new national legislation comes into force just weeks after the rules came into effect.

The Marlborough District Council’s latest freedom camping bylaw came into effect in May. It was forced to redo the bylaw after the New Zealand Motor Caravan Association challenged it in the High Court.

Linda Craighead, the council’s parks and open spaces planner, told the assets and services committee on Tuesday they needed to check there weren’t any inconsistences between the bylaw and the new legislation, and admitted if they found any it would be “terrible”.

The council has gone back and forth on freedom camping bylaws for the best part of two decades, with a 2020 version closing eight freedom camping sites.

The New Zealand Motor Caravan Association argued the 2020 bylaw was “disproportionate and unreasonable”, because it undermined a long-held New Zealand tradition, and punished “tens of thousands of responsible Kiwi families”.

A High Court decision, released in December 2021, ruled the council adopted a bylaw which “significantly changed what it had proposed and consulted on”.

As a result, the council drew up the new bylaw, adopted in March, which took the number of freedom camping sites in the region to 11.

However, each location would have some restrictions, such as the number of days campers could stay, the number of vehicles allowed onsite, and what days of the week camping was allowed.

The new national law, the Self-Contained Motor Vehicles Legislation Act 2023, came into effect on June 6.

Tourism Minister Stuart Nash said in 2021 the freedom camping system as it stood had created an unfair burden on small communities and damaged New Zealand’s reputation as a high-quality visitor destination.

“At the heart of the new law will be greater respect for the environment and communities,” Nash said.

“We are setting clear, minimum expectations for campers. Higher standards must be met before vehicles can be certified as truly self-contained.

“Abuses in the past included campers slapping bogus blue stickers on vehicles to falsely claim compliance.”

The new law required campers to use a certified self-contained vehicle when they stayed on council land, unless a council designated the site as suitable for non-self-contained vehicles.

A regulated system for the certification and registration of self-contained vehicles would be established.

A report prepared by Craighead for the Marlborough District Council said there was not currently a register of certified vehicles, which meant it was difficult for enforcement authorities to verify whether a vehicle was certified or not.

Vehicles would need a fixed toilet to be certified as self-contained.

The default fee for all offences was now $400, up from $200, although there were no infringements handed out last summer, Craighead said.

Meanwhile, five of the council’s freedom camping sites did not have resource consents.

A council’s assets and services information package said resource consents were being prepared for sites at Opouri Rd (Carluke Domain), Alfred Stream, the Renwick dog park, the Wash Bridge recreation reserve and the Wairau Diversion.

The consents were applied for some time ago, and efforts to resolve concerns of submitters had not been successful, the information package said.

As a consequence, the consent was being redrafted to try and deal with submitters’ concerns. It was anticipated the consents would be lodged within the next couple of weeks.