Some freedom campers breaking rules

About 20 camper vans and other vehicles fill a public car park beside the Oval at the southern end of Princes St last week. Photo / Stephen Jaquiery

A Dunedin inner-city parking spot is proving to be popular with freedom campers - but not all of them should be there.

Most mornings and evenings during the summer it has been hard to find a park at the southern end of the Oval as the area has been taken up by vans filled with freedom campers.

There are no public toilets or washing facilities in the area.

The Dunedin City Council's bylaw allows self-contained vehicles to stay overnight on any gravelled or sealed council land set aside for parking, except for places such as cemeteries and Otago Peninsula.

There were at least 18 vans of different sizes when the Otago Daily Times visited the site one morning last week.

While most had the self-contained sticker, at least five did not.

Campers said they had found the site through the cellphone application Camper Mate and were only going to spend one night there before moving on.

Those who did not have toilets on board said they would move to another spot to clean and use the toilet.

Some campers could be seen walking into nearby bushes.

Freedom campers in non-self-contained vehicles are restricted to camping grounds and two designated areas - Warrington Domain and Ocean View Recreation Reserve.

Council acting parks and recreation group manager Robert West said the Oval was one of the areas where freedom campers were known to congregate and was visited nightly by security contractors.

The council had no plans to build a new inner-city zone for non-self-contained vehicles.

Since the start of the year, the council has handed out 218 enforcement notices to freedom campers, almost double the amount compared with the corresponding period last year.

The council was unable to provide a location breakdown for the notices.

The Kensington tavern owner Sue MacKay said there had been a dramatic increase of vehicles parked overnight in the area during the summer.

It was up to the council to cater for the campers. They were not going to stop coming, she said.

"Across the other side of the Oval there is a shower and toilet block. Isn't there some way the council can give them access to them for a small charge? There's got to be a simpler solution.

The only issue she had with freedom campers was when they used the tavern's car parks and went to the toilet in the nearby bushes.

The area had been full most of the summer, she said.

"Mostly they're fine but I do have issues when they clearly don't have toilets on board and they must be going into the bushes.''

In the past, she and her husband had complained to the council but had stopped doing so in the past year, because of what they saw as a lack of enforcement, Mrs MacKay said.

"We have spoken to the council a couple of times about it but unless it really affects us badly I'm not going to bother because it's just a waste of our time.''