In November 2021 a petition sparked Horowhenua District Council to set up an investigation into vehicle access to Waikawa Beach. See Petition for vehicle access to Waikawa Beach. Petitioners had specifically asked that the pedestrian walkway at 10 Reay Mackay Grove be turned into a vehicle access.
At the HDC general meeting on Wednesday 11 October 2023 Councillors voted on options arising from that investigation. See Presentation on Waikawa Beach Vehicle Access, 06 September 2023 and HDC Beach Access vote on 11 October 2023.
The outcome of their deliberations was:
- To go to public consultation: 3. Utilisation of current vehicular access with lease agreement and provision of maintenance budget without application for river training
- To go to public consultation: 3a. Utilisation of current vehicular access with lease agreement and provision of maintenance budget including an application for river training
- Rejected as part of public consultation: 4. Establish new vehicle access adjacent to 10 Reay Mackay Road
Note for future reference: the current vehicle access is through the private land at the end of Manga Pirau Street.
The public will also be consulted on the option of there being no vehicle access from Waikawa Beach. Note: this would not ban vehicles from the beach. It would mean that vehicles would be unable to access the beach from the Waikawa Beach area. People could still drive to a place where vehicle access is available such as Ōtaki or Hokio Beach and drive to Waikawa Beach from there.
To watch the Horowhenua District Council deliberations and the Public Participation speeches beforehand visit YouTube. The Waikawa Beach item begins 24 minutes after the start of the recording. See Council Meeting: 7.5 Waikawa Beach Vehicle Access to jump straight to the start of the session. The Public Participation portion finishes at about 50 minutes from the start of the meeting.
The deliberations portion begins at 1 hour 11 minutes from the start of the meeting: deliberations on the Waikawa Beach vehicle access options.
An important note about the deliberations and how voting worked
In the Agenda the Waikawa Beach item was noted as:
3.2 That this matter or decision is recognised as not significant in terms of S76 of the Local Government Act.
The relevant legislation is at Local Government Act 2002 No 84 (as at 24 August 2023), Public Act Subpart 1—Planning and decision-making – New Zealand Legislation.
I haven’t read this, but what it meant in practice was that HDC had to take a split vote and record how each Councillor voted.
At about 53 minutes in officers acknowledge an error in the report in relation to significance.
At 1 hour and 4 minutes the change was made to acknowledge the change in Significance.
Beginning at 1:32:29 was the vote on the 10 Reay Mackay Grove location going out to public consultation.
The vote was split: 5 For and 5 Against, but given 3 Councillors were not present at the meeting the motion was lost, because the Significance clause had been triggered.
Correction, 13 October 2023: the vote was lost not because of the significance clause but because of HDC Standing Orders. This will be clarified in an upcoming post.
We can therefore expect in coming months that the HDC will set up some sort of public consultation on whether or not vehicles should be able to access the beach from Waikawa Beach itself, and also which of the Manga Pirau Street access options the community prefers: with or without river training (a river cut).
Also note Item 7.5 — 4.3 from the Agenda (P158):
4.3 The private landowner has confirmed its interest in agreeing a formal lease with Council for ongoing use of the existing vehicle access subject to satisfactory terms and conditions. Ngāti Wehi Wehi has confirmed its support for the owner of the land in this context.
There was brief mention of the possibility of a targeted rate to maintain any beach access. One Councillor pointed out that Waikawa Beach is used by and benefits the wider Horowhenua community, in the same way as beaches such as Foxton are. There was no further meaningful discussion of that but be aware it could arise again in future.
