A new around-the-clock call centre ensuring boaties and water users are safer on the Bay of Plenty's harbours and lakes during the summer goes live this week.

From Wednesday, the Bay of Plenty Regional Council's maritime team is switching its duty phones to a call centre to manage all enquiries.

The new call centre will allow all reports, including reporting unsafe boating practices.

This means that even if the officer on duty is already out on a call, all calls for help or reports of problems will be answered promptly.

Regional Harbour Master Peter Buell says the call centre will ensure every call is dealt with quickly - particularly during the very busy summer season.

Peter says: 'The call centre is going to ensure that all of our responses are now logged, and divert a number of non-urgent calls from the people on call so they can focus on the important ones that need to be dealt with promptly to keep people safe.”

Calls to the duty officer phones in Tauranga, Rotorua and Whakatane cover everything from boaties in trouble or others reporting unsafe boating practices to damaged and missing beacons, faulty boat lights and shipping hazards, such as floating logs.

'Implementing the system will be virtually seamless to the public, as the numbers people need to call remain exactly the same,” adds Peter.

'We know that some people regularly using the harbours and lakes already have numbers for individual maritime officers, but we hope that they call the duty officer number to reduce the pressure on our staff, especially when the water is so busy.

'We also hope people will keep themselves safe on the water this summer, wearing lifejackets, sticking to the speed rules and always having three people when water skiing.”

In Tauranga the Maritime Duty Officer number is: 07 928 3385, in Whakatane: 07 308 8570 and in Rotorua: 07 9213375.

Members of the public are asked to continue reporting pollution incidents on the water to the regional council's pollution hotline on: 0800 884 883.