Boat trailers to be moved within three months or be impounded

At present, boat trailers can gather rust on the street for an indefinite period unless there are parking restrictions or evidence the trailer has been abandoned. This is whether the trailer is registered or not.

There are about 204,000 boat trailers registered in NSW, many of which are parked outside houses and apartment blocks in areas where it is difficult to find parking.

Local Government minister Paul Toole said the new measures were aimed at alleviating the frustration of many residents who were not able to find parking in high density areas.

"Increasingly, boat owners are using street parking as a long-term parking solution for their boats," Mr Toole said. "This in turn has led to legitimate concerns about the loss of amenity.

"These new measures will allow council officers to specifically target boat trailers which have been parking for considerable periods of time and for which their councils have received complaints."

Boat Owners' Association of NSW president Jeff Richards said he supported the idea of moving unused boats but only if councils carried out proper checks before impounding them.

"In general we support the idea if they really are unused for a long time as long as there is a process with warnings and stickers. People can't just park them on the street for 3, 4, 5, 6 months at a time for extended periods," he said.

Mr Richards said one concern was for people who used their boats on the weekends or every couple of weeks and then parked them back in a similar spot.

"Consider a fisherman who goes fishing at 3am in the morning and comes back at 2pm in the afternoon and probably puts the trailer back into the same place. He is using that boat every fortnight but as far as council officers are concerned it has been there the whole time."

Mr Toole said the government had set aside $5 million to help local councils and other organisations establish off-street boat trailer parking facilities to help ease congestion.