New Freedom Camping By-law in place from today

We welcome campers to the Coromandel, but as of midday today the new Freedom Camping Bylaw is in place and will be enforced district wide.

We have undertaken a review of its bylaw and the adopted 2014 bylaw states all freedom campers must be in a certified self-contained vehicle. If anyone is camping in their car, a tent, or in a vehicle that doesn't have a certified self-contained toilet on board they still need to be going to either a commercial or DOC campsite.

"We are freedom-camping friendly, but need to balance this with protecting our environment. Our special environment is why people want to come here in the first place," says Mayor Glenn Leach.

As part of the new bylaw we also needed to look at areas where it is considered necessary to restrict freedom camping. The Community Boards finalised areas that are prohibited and restricted for reasons under the Freedom Camping Act.
There are some designated areas within the restricted zones which will have limitations on numbers of vehicles and limits to how many days.

For a full list of areas with restrictions please see the full Freedom Camping Bylaw 2014 on www.tcdc.govt.nz/freedomcamping.

We are also working with NZMCA on developing a "Camping Pack" which will be sold in i-Sites from mid-December. The packs will have all the information needed for a safe and happy trip to the Coromandel as well as a few added extras such as a TCDC rubbish bag, postcards of our district and a drink bottle.

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