Eskdale Park

Severe damage was inflicted on Eskdale Park by Cyclone Gabrielle in February 2023. An update on the state of the park (as at October 2024) is:  

The removal of silt and recontouring of Eskdale Park has been completed and the park is being refenced and grassed.

The parks team is asking that people continue to stay off the park at the moment, to allow the grass to establish. With the right weather conditions, it is expected to be ‘open’ pre-Christmas.

Unfortunately, the cyclone destroyed almost all of the facilities on the park, including playground equipment, picnic furniture, fencing, and toilets. One toilet block will be able to be repaired but that will take some time. For this summer, Council will install  ‘portaloos’.

It is important to note that while opening the park will provide access to popular river swimming spots, there are concerns about safety. The cyclone is likely to have deposited debris (logs etc) in the stream which will be dangerous to swimmers. Hawke's Bay Regional Council has confirmed that the Esk River is not suitable for swimming at the moment and will review the situation for summer.

Looking ahead, Council will be talking with the community about the replacement of facilities on the park. Pre-cyclone, a draft Reserve Management Plan had been prepared for Eskdale Park, however with the community and the park being so severely impacted that will require revisiting. Those conversations will happen in the new year.

Prior to the cyclone, Council prepared a draft Reserve Management Plan for Eskdale Park based on community input. The plan had been published for formal submissions and was ready to be presented to Council for its consideration.

That last stage of the process was waiting on the outcome of complaints to the Ombudsman on Council’s community engagement process related to a request by the Hawke’s Bay Mountain Bike Club for access to its mountain bike tracks on private land from Eskdale Park, and on two matters related to reserves in Havelock North.

That finding was received in September and Council has prepared a statement and timeline of its engagement with the Hawke's Bay Mountain Bike Club, as requested and approved by the Ombudsman, acknowledging the decision. You can read the statement below (which includes a link to the full Ombudsman document).

That should have triggered the consultation on the Eskdale Park RMP, however the cyclone has vastly changed the landscape of the park and the facilities on it. Council has also received advice from the mountain bike club that it no longer has any interest in accessing its trails from the park.

Those things materially change the basis on which the draft RMP was developed.

The parks team will now review the draft RMP and re-start public discussion on it in the new year. That will include talking with the community about the replacement of facilities on the park.
If you have questions related to these matters, please email parks@hdc.govt.nz.

The Ombudsman has released his finding into three complaints against Hasting District Council, lodged by a resident in 2022.

You can read the full findings here.

On two of the complaints relating to Council’s decision-making on tracks in Tainui Reserve and its management of tracks and trails during Covid-19 lockdowns, the Ombudsmen found in favour of Council.

On a third complaint regarding Eskdale Park and Council’s considerations in 2020 of the Hawke’s Bay Mountain Bike Club’s desire to make use of Eskdale Park and have a link from the park to its track network on private land, the Ombudsman found in favour of the complainant. He noted that while Council’s actions gave the appearance that a specific group (the HBMBC) received special treatment from Council, he found: “There is nothing obviously untoward in the Council’s actions, and I have found no evidence the Council has deliberately concealed information from the public about MBMBC’s desire to develop a mountain biking hub in Eskdale Park.”

The Ombudsman found that Council should have held a workshop on the matter in public and kept minutes of the meeting, and either stopped HBMBC from using Council’s logo and the word ‘partnership’ [with Council] in relation to the project in its communications or, post-publication, corrected HBMBC’s statements.

He said Council members’ supportive comments regarding the club’s vision and the handling of the engagement process, when considered alongside the closed workshop and HBMBC’s communications, led to a perception of bias; a result that could and should have been mitigated by Council.

Council apologises for its handling of this matter and, as requested by the Ombudsman, appends an overview of its engagement with the HBMBC below.

Council also notes that it has, since an Ombudsman’s report into Council workshops in 2023, adopted an ‘open by default’ policy for workshops,

This page on Council’s website outlines its workshop policy.
 
Hastings District Council is committed to conducting business in a manner that is open, transparent, and facilitates accountability and public participation.
 
Workshops are part of an educative phase of Council’s decision-making process and provide an opportunity for discussion between elected members and Council staff. Workshops cannot be used to make final decisions - these can only be made at Council meetings.
Council workshops are expected to be open to the public, unless there are good reasons to exclude the public. These reasons include that the topics for discussion:

• are, or are likely to be, subject to litigation
• include commercial information (Council and/or external parties) that must be protected or the proposal is subject to negotiation
• include people's personal information that is required to be kept confidential
• include matters in the early stages of conceptual development where the proposal will be subject to full commercial engagement and participation
• other reasons which would render an open workshop unreasonable.

HDC’s engagement timeline with HBMBC on its development proposal

• Interactions between HDC and HBMBC in October and November 2018 were focused on the HBMBC application to Pan Pac to extend their track network on privately owned Pan Pac Forest Productions land. HBMBC requested a letter from HDC, as well as Napier City Council and Hawke’s Bay Regional Council, to support this application, which was provided.

HDC did not consider that public engagement was required, as this Licence to Occupy was solely about the construction of a trail network by HBMBC on privately owned Pan Pac land.

• Interactions between HDC and HBMBC commencing August 2019, followed Pan Pac approval to allow HBMBC to develop the track network on its land, with HBMBC seeking HDC assistance in the preparation of their applications to the Provincial Growth Fund, for funding for its track network. While this was primarily about the creation of tracks on Pan Pac land, HBMBC did identify an idea to access their tracks from Eskdale Park.

HDC did not consider that public engagement was required, as the funding applications were about the creation of tracks on private land and were commercially sensitive; and the access from Eskdale Park was only an ‘idea’ at this time.

• Interactions between HDC and HBMBC between March and May 2020 related to the Resource Consent application to create the trails in Pan Pac forest land (with access from Waipunga Road, not Eskdale Park).

HDC was the consenting authority, and in accordance with Section 95A(9)(b) of the Resource Management Act 1991, the application was processed on a non-notified basis, therefore no public engagement was required.

• In May 2020, HBMBC contacted HDC Parks team advising that a Resource Consent to construct trails on Pan Pac land with access from Waipunga Road had been obtained; but that the club would now like to investigate the potential for access to the track network in Pan Pac, from Eskdale Park, as an alternative access to Waipunga.
• In June 2020, HBMBC present its vision for the Pan Pac mountain bike park (which included their idea for an alternative access from Eskdale Park) to a closed Council workshop, that would form the basis of its applications for Provincial Growth funds. HBMBC handed out their ‘Project Plan’ at the end of this workshop, which included an HDC logo as a ‘partner’. No formal resolution was sought or provided at this workshop.

HDC considered that this workshop needed to be closed to the public, given the potential commercial sensitivity of HBMBC’s funding applications to the Provincial Growth Fund. The Ombudsman has concluded that this workshop ought to have been held in a way that was open to the public, and the HDC accepts that finding.

• In July 2020, HDC commenced public engagement regarding HBMBC’s proposal to use Eskdale Park as an alternative access point to its tracks on Pan Pac land. The consultation information was clear that formal approval would be required under the provisions of both the District Plan and District Wide Reserves Management Plan, and that no formal application had yet been applied for by HBMBC.

HDC considers that the community was engaged regarding the HBMBC proposal to use part of Eskdale Park as an alternative access point into its consented new track network in Pan Pac land within a timely manner (within 43 working days) from when the HBMBC confirmed to Council it would like to pursue the idea, following completion of their due diligence that it was potentially feasible.
 
Council fully accepts the Ombudsman’s finding that the June 2020 workshop should have been open to the public, and HDC should have immediately requested that its logo be removed from the Project Plan.