July 2022
In 2022 the Tauranga City Council underwent a review of the Easter Sunday Shop Trading Policy, which currently allows all shops in Tauranga to trade on Easter Sunday if they wish to. Tauranga City Council adopted their Easter Sunday Shop Trading Policy in 2017. The current policy applies to all of Tauranga and allows shops to trade on Easter Sunday if they wish to. Other regulations about the sale of alcohol and associated matters still apply. Staff have the right to choose not to work on Easter Sunday if they are asked to by their employer. Easter Sunday is not a paid public holiday and people who work on Easter Sunday are not automatically entitled to additional compensation.
You can find out more about the Councils review and public consultation here.
Below is the Restaurant Association’s submission on the Easte Sunday trading policy review.
Introduction
The Restaurant Association of New Zealand (the Restaurant Association) welcomes the opportunity to make a submission on the Review of the Tauranga City Council Easter Sunday Shop Trading Policy 2017. We would like to present to Council in support of our submission.
We support the Council’s preferred option, which would continue to allow trading in all of Tauranga on Easter Sunday.
We also support the suggested change to the policy, which would allow for events and markets to be held on Easter Sunday (and clarifies that the term ‘shops’ also include markets).
Feedback
- As the representative body for more than 2,500 hospitality businesses across Aotearoa, we surveyed our membership on the topic of Easter trading to gather their views. A summary of responses to this survey are available at Appendix 1.
- The specific inclusion of events and markets held on Easter Sunday is a welcome addition to the policy. As you will know, events and markets bring people out of their homes – with a flow on benefit for hospitality.
- All of our members who operate in the wider Bay of Plenty region and responded to our survey said that they choose to open over all, or part of, the Easter period.
- At a national level, 72% of our members open over Easter, with 28% of members choosing not to for a variety of reasons. A fundamental consideration is that approximately half of all Territorial Authorities do not have a local Easter Sunday shop trading policy in place, so retail businesses are not permitted to open, which impacts hospitality through foot traffic into their businesses.
- The most common reason given for closing on Easter Sunday is that it isn’t financially viable to open, with reduced patronage making it difficult to cover the increase in labour costs. Alcohol laws being too confusing to understand was also raised as an issue.
- Members also cite that closing on Easter Sunday gives business owners and staff the opportunity to take a break.
- However, the Restaurant Association submits that following two years of subdued trading due to the pandemic, the overriding consideration should be that the choice to open rests with the business owner, not local or central government.
Pandemic Recovery
- The Hospitality sector remains one of the industries hardest hit by the pandemic, and is still reeling from its impact.
- While most of the attention on supporting our sector’s recovery has been directed towards central government, there are a number of things local councils can do to ease the pressure hospitality businesses are facing.
- Allowing hospitality business owners the opportunity to choose to operate over the Easter period is something we support and we value the position the Tauranga City Council has taken on this issue.
- 67% of our members in the Bay of Plenty region support a review of Easter trading laws – the Shop Trading Hours Act 1990 as well as local Easter trading policies – with a similar level of support for such action nationwide.
- We would welcome the opportunity to work with Tauranga City Council to advocate for a review of the Shop Trading Hours Act 1990, if the Council is supportive of this position.