The abandoned car neither Auckland Council nor police have the power to move

Friday, 25 October 2019

The car has been sitting on Mountain Rd in Panmure for the past few months.

A smashed-up car has been sitting on an Auckland street for months and nothing can be done to move it.

Panmure local Wendy Knight said she walked past the white car, on Mountain Rd, every day and had seen it there for at least the last two months.

'Police won't do anything as it's not stolen and Auckland Transport won't do anything as it isn't illegally parked, so now there's just road works going on around it,' Knight said.

Knight described the car as an 'eyesore' which was constantly getting vandalised, with glass and trash scattering the ground around it.

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'It's taking up a whole parking space, and nobody seems interested in getting rid of it,' Knight said.

The windows of the car have all been smashed and a thin layer of grime can be seen coating the white paint on the car.

The windows of the car have all been smashed in.

Pieces of glass, old clothing and rubbish lie strewn across the seats.

Auckland Transport spokeswoman Natalie Polley said Auckland Transport could not move the car as the registration was valid until December 6, 2019.

'For this reason it can't be classed as abandoned. AT gets hundreds of reported abandoned vehicle cases per month, but only a few filter through as actual abandoned cases to work.

'The car has to have an expired registration and warrant and we need to be unable to identify an owner.'

If the vehicle could pose a safety risk AT would remove it and store the vehicle until it could either be reunited with the owner or disposed of, Polley said.

A police spokeswoman said if a car wasn't stolen or causing traffic issues there was nothing police could do.

'As I'm sure you can appreciate, this is not a matter for police to deal with,' she said.

The number of abandoned vehicle cases across Auckland has surged in 2019 with AT investigating 175 per cent more cases than it did five years ago.

In 2019, AT had already looked into 1304 abandoned vehicles by the end of August.