My Account
Information office closure
On January 7, I tried to visit the Warkworth information office at 2.30 pm only to discover this area information centre is only open from 10am to 2pm at the height of the holiday and visitor season. Hardly appropriate.
I used to work there as a volunteer when the centre was open all day, every day, except Christmas Day. We were always full of visitors. Has this service ceased to function or are people just not interested in providing the service despite the fact they are being paid? Or are the powers that be just ignorant of the need for this service? I checked the website which declared that the i-site was open 10am to 2pm on Saturday, but when I arrived there on Saturday, the office was closed.
Trisha Pieterse, Snells Beach
One Mahurangi Business Assn manager Murray Chapman replies:
I am sorry that the Information Centre was not open when you called in. The centre has changed quite a lot since you were a volunteer and is not an i-site anymore. The centre receives no funding from Council and operates on the capacity of volunteers and one part-time, paid employee under the management of One Mahurangi Business Association.
I made the decision to keep the Centre closed over that time as our paid staff member was ill and we had an acute shortage of volunteers. This, coupled with the fact that there are no overseas visitors around, means the number of visitors coming through has been limited.
The Warkworth Information Centre does not have its own website but the centre’s listing on Google and on the One Mahurangi website lists its correct opening hours, which are Mon to Fri, from 10am to 4pm. It is possible that you went to the Trip Advisor website which hadn’t updated our hours. We have asked them to rectify this. We simply did not have the capacity to be open during the time you visited, but regret that you were misinformed by an external website.
