My Account
A community trust formed to save and preserve the ruins of the Wilson Cement Works in Warkworth is frustrated at getting little help or response from site owner Auckland Council.
Cement Works Warkworth’s Tina Earl says she and trust co-founder John Tate have been trying to arrange meetings with relevant officers and staff for the past two years with little or no success.
“We keep getting fobbed off. The last letters I’ve sent I haven’t even had a response,” she said. “All we want from Council is their verbal and written support to sign off and do things.”
In the meantime, conditions at the cement works are deteriorating, she added.
“This has been going on for years and the site is just an absolute tip. It’s full of graffiti,
the fences are all down and destroyed and not being repaired. It’s dangerous as well as an eyesore.
“Bearing in mind this is Rodney’s only Heritage Category 1 listed site, I remain amazed at how little they seem interested in conserving it. We do understand that they are busy, but this is an important site and we have been trying for years to get traction.
“Future planning and goal-setting is needed and we need to do this in co-ordination with Council.”
Earl said the trust and Friends of the Cement Works were more than willing to do necessary work and make sure they were compliant with regulations, but they still needed to be given the training and permission by Council.
Rodney Local Board set aside $20,000 to develop a management plan to preserve the site in its annual community work programme for the 2021-22 financial year, which was approved in August last year. At the time, it was estimated this would be carried out by June, but in its latest update presented to the board on December 7, Council admitted there had been “a minor delay” due to Covid.
On Thursday last week, Council area operations manager Geoff Pitman said a draft plan could still take several months.
“The project has been progressing and we recently contracted professional services,” he said. “We expect further progress to be made with this project in the New Year, with a draft document expected before June.”
Earl added that it would be nice to see some of the $17,600 filming permit fee that was paid to Council by Netflix to film the series Sweet Tooth at the cement works last winter.
Council said in April it would make 80% of that money available to Rodney Local Board for it to be budgeted in the following financial year, in line with Council’s intention for the bulk of permit fees to benefit the communities where filming takes place.
