April 2025
Tauranga City Council
Private Bag 12022
Tauranga 3143
New Zealand
Restaurant Association of New Zealand submission on the Tauranga City Council draft Annual Plan 2025/26
The Restaurant Association of New Zealand (the Restaurant Association) welcomes the opportunity to submit on the Tauranga City Council draft Annual Plan 2025/26.
Since 1972, the Restaurant Association has worked to offer advice, help and assistance in every facet of the vibrant and diverse hospitality industry, covering the length and breadth of the country. We’re passionate about our vibrant industry, which is full of interesting, talented and entrepreneurial people.
The Restaurant Association would like to note that this submission is in reference to the ‘Food Premises’ and ‘Street Dining’ sections of the 2025/26 Fees and Charges consultation document. As the representative body for more than 2,500 hospitality businesses, who are predominantly restaurant and cafe owners, we are concerned about both the street dining proposal and the food premises proposal.
While the Restaurant Association recognises the cost pressures faced by Councils across the country, we are concerned about the Council’s decision to standardise the street dining fee. Standardising the street dining fee will result in immense price increases for some businesses. For example, a hospitality business in Zone B will incur over a 500% increase, even with the 50% discount of the full rate of $100 per metre. The proposal also states that these new fees would occur from July 1, leaving businesses with minimal time to plan for and adjust to that shift in costs.
The combination of standardised street dining fees and increases to food premises fees result in a vast increase in the cost for hospitality businesses to simply exist. We’re proud of the contribution our businesses make to our vibrant towns, cities and communities, but we need policy settings that enable this to continue. Hospitality businesses are already struggling to keep the doors open and these fee increases mean that it will be more expensive for a hospitality business to simply exist.
We are also concerned that many Councils across the country use cost recovery as a blanket justification for increasing fees across the board, often without any transparency around actual costs incurred by the Council. It is our position that Councils should provide evidence of the actual cost of processing licences as part of their consultation, so licencees can have confidence that the amount being recovered is accurate and fair.
Finally, we would like to see that Councils have sought to improve efficiencies or cut the internal cost of licences before passing these costs on to licencees. Businesses are not an endless source of funds that can withstand constant levying by local authorities, and we submit that there must be an attempt on behalf of regulatory bodies across the country to build confidence in their activities.
Thank you for the opportunity to provide feedback on your draft Annual Plan 2025/26. We would be happy to discuss any part of this submission in more detail, and to provide any assistance that you may require.
Ngā mihi nui
Marisa Bidois
Chief Executive