Self-contained motor-homes only: recommends Nelson Mayor

Nelson Mayor Aldo Miccio recommends that the council’s review of freedom camping looks at only allowing self-contained motor homes at council designated sites in the future.

In August last year, Nelson City Councillors agreed to designate two central-city carparks for travellers who stay in self-contained and non self-contained campervans.

Aldo Miccio says he has been listening over the past couple of months to the public’s concerns about how the policy has worked this year, and he is keen to hear the outcome of the full review that council staff will undertake after summer.

“Many of the public are clearly concerned about various aspects of the freedom camping policy, such as the highly visible sites chosen this year, specifically about Sovereign St being close to residential homes, and ratepayers are also concerned about the cost to council of providing facilities and enforcement, ” Miccio says. “I encourage people to ring or email the council’s Customer Service Centre over the next week or so about their views on freedom camping, to ensure the breadth of opinions are included in council’s review of the policy.

“I also fully support calls for new central government legislation to better manage freedom camping nationally,” he says. “Specifically, I agree with the idea Nick Smith suggested recently that vehicles are charged for driver infringements, rather than the driver. It is costly and time consuming for council to enforce the by-laws and chase overseas tourists. Putting the onus onto the campervan operators to educate their clientele about the rules in different regions, and allowing operators to ask for a bond that covers any possible fines their clients might incur, seems to me to be a much better system in the long run.

“In the meantime, I personally agree with council’s stance to provide free camping sites, to ensure motor homes don’t park in inappropriate areas or on the side of the road,” he says. “However, on these sites, I only support motor homes that are self contained with their own toilets. If the vehicle does not have its own toilet facilities then, in my view, they should stay at camp sites which have the full facilities that they need.

“Another option for consideration is a small charge for self-contained campers to stay at designated public locations, to cover the city’s cost of hosting motor homes,” he says. “A voucher tourists buy and display in their van, that covers a number of nights in the region at specific sites, could certainly help reduce the bill to ratepayers in the future.”

ENDS

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