Grazing horses in Opotiki could be banned as police and council staff are overwhelmed with the numbers roaming the streets.

On Tuesday, Opotiki district councillors voted to ban horses from grazing on council land.

They will now seek public feedback on a proposal to completely ban horses from the township and to hire and train addition animal control staff to respond to the high number of horse-related callouts.

More staff and training will cost the Opotiki community $200,000 a year.

The decision to deal with horses this way caused much debate between councillors.

Planning and regulatory group manager Gerard McCormack says the sheer number of horses roaming Opotiki's urban streets has become out of control and neither police nor the council had the resources to deal with it.

He says the roaming horses are a safety issue as they could cause traffic crashes, injure people on the street, and damage fences and gardens.

Horses grazing on stopbanks can also cause damage that might result in the stopbanks failing during an extreme weather event.

In late 2020, the council introduced measures such as banning stallions from the town and forming a register of horses, but McCormack says these have failed to manage the horses.

He says training animal control staff to deal with horses is essential because the council will be liable to WorkSafe if any untrained staff are 'crushed or kicked” when trying to wrangle a horse.

It will also be liable if a horse escaped or was set free from a council paddock and caused death or injury in a car crash.

He says despite stallions being banned, there are still a lot of them in town and they are dangerous.

'We've tried putting the responsibility on horse owners but they're not taking notice because the problem is getting worse.

'They're not our horses, people need to take responsibility for them.”

This group of eight horses was spotted roaming outside the Opotiki District Council last month. SUPPLIED / FACEBOOK.

Councillor Barry Howe was opposed to council making any decision on the day as he felt it needed to workshop the issue further.

Howe says the council can rent land at the end of Church Street to horse owners and felt that the additional $200,000 a year was too much for ratepayers.

'We should have a public meeting and put the onus on the horse owners,” he says.

'They might be able to come up with a solution themselves. I don't want to ban horses from town; they are good recreation for our youth.”

Councillor Louis Rapihana also doesn't agree with banning horses from the town but says the council should approve the additional animal control budget immediately.

'The horse problem is not going away, and we need the staff with the skills to deal with it, otherwise we will be left with horses on our streets,” he says.

'I'm prepared to pay for the safety of our staff and public. Our current staff don't have the skills to deal with the current issue we have … they can't catch them so unless we want to go catch them ourselves.”

Councillor David Moore is concerned by the impact the horses are having on the town's stopbanks and says there's a possibility the stopbanks can be breached similar to what happened in Edgecumbe.

However, he's not sold on the additional animal control staff and says change needs to be led by the horse community.

Councillor Debi Hocart says she's concerned about the additional cost to ratepayers but notes that it is horse owners' responsibility to ensure their horses are under control.

'If they have nowhere to graze them, then why have they got them?” she says.

Chief executive Aileen Lawrie says if the council's default position is to ban horses when it goes out to public consultation, this will put the onus on horse owners to prove they can manage them.

If horses are to be banned from the Opotiki township, they can still be brought into town to ride the horse trail.

They would be banned from grazing in the town.