Submission

Federated Farmers Feedback on Western Bay of Plenty District Council Rentals for Encroachments on Council Land

The Western Bay of Plenty’s policy to charge users a fee for the use of unformed (paper) road is fundamentally flawed.

Firstly Council is unable to provide the user with exclusive rights because statute requires the Council to ensure that the public has access to the road.  The Council cannot charge a rent where it does not give the user ‘quiet enjoyment’ and exclusive user rights..

The Council has not addressed the faulty methodology used to calculate any fee payable or how it will evaluate the maintenance and environmental values provided by the user.  The Policy itself will likely exclude all paper roads which makes the Policy unnecessary.

Federated Farmers consider that the policy may have adverse consequences if licensees choose to surrender any licence to use paper roads rather than potentially face a charge.  In such circumstance the Council will become responsible for maintenance, pest control, removal of refuse on paper roads.

Federated Farmers accepts in principle that reserves may be approached differently than paper roads but many of the shortcomings of the policy remains.  Federated Farmers recommends that the better policy for Council would be to negotiate directly with the few significant users of Reserve to agree a lease agreement.