Freedom camping regulations

About the consultation

Public consultation on the Freedom Camping Regulations discussion document occurred between 8 September and 6 October 2022.

The discussion document contained proposals for new freedom camping regulations. Regulations are the detailed rules that are not written in the Self-contained Motor Vehicles Legislation Act.

We sought your views on the best way to regulate the following aspects of freedom camping:

• the technical requirements for self-contained vehicles
• the criteria for approval as a self-containment certification authority
• the format of the self-containment certificate and warrant
• the fees and fines attached to each infringement offence
• exemptions from the need to be certified as self-contained
• levies and fees to cover the costs of providing regulatory oversight.

These proposals and options affect everyone who freedom camps, certifies vehicles as self-contained, or is otherwise involved with freedom camping.

Summary of submissions

Thank you to everyone who engaged with us and made submissions during the consultation period. The feedback will be used to help the Government make its final decisions about the new freedom camping regulations.

MBIE has analysed the submissions received and produced a summary report.

Submissions

In the Freedom Camping Regulations discussion document, we noted our intention to publish PDF copies of all submissions we receive to our website, unless submitters specified otherwise.

MBIE received 122 submissions on the discussion document:

• 72 submissions are published with attribution
• 36 are published with the submitters’ names withheld
• 14 submissions have been entirely withheld at the submitters’ request

Personal information, such as submitters' email addresses and IP addresses, have been redacted from all submissions where they are not already publicly available.

Released submissions can be found here:

Freedom Camping Regulations submissions(external link)

Up to date information on the freedom camping changes

Up to date information on the freedom camping changes can be found here:

Freedom camping changes