West Coast rūnanga aims to make freedom camping user-pays

Friday, 17 August 2018

Getting councils and private investors interested in user pays freedom camping blocks has been a tough sell for Marlborough entrepreneur Chris Wagner, but he is beginning to get some traction.

Ngāi Tahu rūnanga Ngāti Waewae wants to build four user-pays freedom camping pods on the West Coast with ambitions of rolling out a chain of them on South Island tourist routes.

Rūnanga chair Francois Tumahai said they wanted to have the first KiwiCamp unit up and running by December in Hokitika's main street, but had yet to get planning consent from the Westland District Council for a Fitzherbert St site near the Challenge Garage.

There are plans to partner with other rūnanga to build another three KiwiCamps on private land and culturally significant sites at Haast, Franz Josef and Punakaiki.

The $200,000 prefab units are made in Marlborough where the design was pioneered by founder KiwiCamp founder Chris Wagner, and the Tasman District Council will also install one after recently receiving money from the Government's $8.5m freedom camping fund.

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KiwiCamp uses an app to charge customers for taking showers, dumping waste, and doing laundry and dishes, with unit owners getting a cut of the proceeds.

Providing freedom campers with facilities to dump rubbish and wash helps prevents scenes like this, according to Francois Tumahai.

Tumahai said they hoped to include electric charging stations at the West Coast sites which would cater for both certified selfcontained vehicles with onboard toilets and showers, and those without.

Although the income was a factor in the rūnanga investment, it was also about protecting the environment.

'It's filling a gap, giving somewhere for this group to go, and trying to accommodate them in a space so they are they're not scattered all over the place.'

Tumahai said they were not aiming to take money away from commercial camp grounds, the closest of which was about 2km from the proposed Hokitika site.

He thought they would charge about $15 a night for a parking spot, but they were yet to finalise how many vehicles could be accommodated.

Wagner said a standard KiwiCamp held 35 vehicles and up to 75 people, and needed a camping ground licence because it charged for parking spaces.

Top 10 Holiday Parks NZ chief executive David Ovendale says there is 'absolutely a place for freedom camping,' but doubts commercial camp grounds can afford to provide budget areas for them.

Four other investors in the North Island and central Christchurch are interested in the concept, but Wagner has given up on the idea of setting up a freedom camping facility in the city's residential red zone.

'It would have been ideal but there's a lot of political football about the area, and so many ideas, it's hard to cut through that bureaucratic red tape.'

If the two Christchurch investors signed up he envisaged 200 vehicle 'super' KiwiCamps close to the city centre.

Concerns about the negative impact of freedom camping led Tourism Minister Kelvin Davis to commission a report from a Responsible Camping Working Group.

That report released on Wednesday recommended an overhaul of the 33-year-old camping ground regulations and said there was a need to clarify whether they covered facilities that charged for the use of showers and toilets, but not for overnight parking.

The working group said the regulations were too restrictive and should be more flexible to allow for basic low-cost campsites that still met public health and safety standards.

Tourism Industry Aotearoa chief executive and working party member Chris Roberts suggested camp grounds should be able to set up budget areas for freedom campers who didn't mind being closer together with fewer facilities.

But Top 10 Holiday Parks chief executive David Ovendale said that would be uneconomic.

'We're the most seasonal business outside the snow industry and we can't afford to give it away in the high season.

'We make 12 months revenue in four months, so asking parks to discount to accommodate a lower margin freedom camper in a designated area is seriously not going to fly.'

It was also impractical to try to 'subdivide' parks and tell budget travellers that certain areas, such as swimming pools, were off limits, said Ovendale.