Hastings District Council (Māori: Te Kaunihera ā-Rohe o Heretaunga) is the territorial authority for the Hastings District of New Zealand. The council covers the urban areas of Havelock North, Hastings and Flaxmere, and the surrounding settlements of Clive, Te Awanga, Haumoana and Waimarama. It was formed in 1989, through the merger of Hastings City Council, Havelock North Borough Council and the Hawke's Bay County Council.
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Hastings District is a territorial authority district within the Hawke's Bay region, on the east coast of the North Island of New Zealand. It includes the southern half of the Hawke Bay coast, excluding Napier City, which is under a separate territorial authority. Hastings District Council is headquartered in the city of Hastings, the district's largest town.
The district has an area of 5,227 square kilometres. The population was 88,300 as of June 2025, which is 1.7% of the population of New Zealand, ranking it tenth in population size out of the seventy-four territorial authorities. This comprises 49,800 people in the Hastings urban area, 15,000 people in the Havelock North urban area, 2,040 people in the Clive urban area, and 21,460 people in rural areas and settlements.
Mayor Sandra Hazlehurst was elected in a by-election in 2017, and re-elected in the 2019 election.
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Rush Munro's is the oldest running ice creamery in New Zealand. It is based in Hawke's Bay, and its ice cream is sold in supermarkets, cafés, restaurants and ice cream parlours. The company still uses the 1926 recipes of founder Frederick Charles Rush Munro, which contain no preservatives or food colourings. The company locally sources its ingredients, and banana peeling and fruit pulping is done by hand.
The most sold flavours at Rush Munro's are vanilla bean, maple walnut, passionfruit, double chocolate and hokey pokey. New flavours such as chocolate mint and green tea only account for a small percentage of sales. The ice creamery produces between 260,000 and 300,000 litres of ice cream per year. A 2015 survey of 1797 New Zealanders conducted by Canstar Blue found that Rush Munro's is one of New Zealand's favourite brands, reaching around the same level of satisfaction as Tip Top and family brand Oob Organic.
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The Hastings Clock Tower is a public landmark in the New Zealand city of Hastings. Designed by Sidney George Chaplin, and erected in 1935, the tower is located in the Hastings central business district alongside the Palmerston North-Gisborne railway line adjacent to the intersection of Heretaunga Street and Russell Street. The clock tower was designed as a symbol of recovery from the 1931 Hawke's Bay earthquake and was not intended as a memorial; however, in 1995, brass plaques were added to the tower in memory of those who died in the earthquake.
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Heretaunga Street, Māori: Te Tiriti o Heretaunga, Heretaunga, is the main arterial road through Hastings, New Zealand. The street forms the heart of the Central Business District of Hastings City across six blocks numbered 100, 200, and 300 Blocks with the railway line dividing the blocks by East and West. The name Heretaunga is taken from the name of the Māori Land Block on which Hastings was established in 1873.
The majority of buildings along Heretaunga Street were destroyed or damaged in the deadly 1931 Hawke's Bay earthquake. As a result the six City Centre blocks were rebuilt predominantly between the years 1931–1936 in the architectural styles of Stripped Classicism, Art Deco, and Spanish Mission Revival and now comprise a full historic streetscape in one of the longest contiguous retail high streets in New Zealand.
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Hastings Central is the central suburb and business district of Hastings City, in the Hawke's Bay Region of New Zealand's North Island.
The council is led by the mayor of Hastings, who is currently Wendy Schollum.