Watch: New drone footage shows full magnitude of North Shore slip with 'over 50 per cent' of car parks gone

Over 50% of carparks have now been lost in the Rawene car park.

New drone footage, taken by 1 NEWS, has revealed the full magnitude of an enormous slip on Auckland's North Shore.

Auckland Council confirmed this morning they've been aware of issues with the car park facing Rawene Road Reserve, in Birkenhead, for some time.

Problems with the site were noticed months ago, with locals questioning the council's response.

But a local business owner thinks the council didn't take the situation as seriously as they should have until catastrophe struck yesterday, when a huge chunk of the car park slipped away.

Steve Simms of Birkenhead Brewing Company told 1 NEWS they'd now lost "over 50 per cent of their car parks."

A chunk looks like it's been bitten off a North Shore carpark after a large swathe collapsed recently.

“We were seeing cracks in the car park about 8-9 weeks ago," Mr Simms told 1 NEWS.

"They started to get bigger and bigger, and we got some feedback from a customer saying 'hey don't park there, something's going to happen fairly shortly' because it's a gully.

"There's no retaining walls. And sure enough, here we are today looking at a new valley being formed in Birkenhead."

Auckland Council said it had been monitoring the car park for about a year.

But Mr Simms said: "In the last week or so they've just woken up to it and seen the damage that’s now been occurring".

"I don't think the response was taken too seriously to begin with until this event occurred."

Council focusing on safety

Auckland Council spokesman Greg Edmonds told media this morning they were waiting on engineering assessments before taking the next step.

"Safety is our first priority and our engineers are working with building inspectors from Auckland Council who are assessing all structures in the area," chief infrastructure officer Mr Edmonds said.

"We've been monitoring this site now for over a year and some cracks appeared a few weeks ago that we've obviously isolated, but the structure underneath the car park has failed.

"It appears the substrate soil underneath has fallen away."

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