This summer Kapiti Coast’s beaches are looking more like highways.

Those caught driving unlawfully on the beach could face $750 fines as the Kapiti Coast District Council cracks down on the growing problem.

Environmental standards manager Jacquie Muir said a council enforcement team stopped 23 drivers on Paraparaumu's beach in just under an hour on a patrol last month.

“We are known as a district of beaches and our coastlines are long, they’re easily accessible and easily drivable but we also have a large population that frequents our beaches."

She said the way some people drove was a safety risk.

“It isn’t technically a road, it is a beach. We don’t have footpaths, we don’t have centrelines.

“When you’ve got people who are down there driving like idiots and driving dangerously doing all sorts of wheel spins and the likes, that really does have a huge risk to people.”

Muir said the worst hot spot was the stretch of beach from the Paraparaumu Boating Club to Waikanae, where driving on the beach is banned.

She said, in general, the rules were vehicles could access the beach if they were launching a boat, needed to for emergency purposes or were within marked areas where driving was permitted.

Senior sergeant Chanel Chapman said she hoped a $750 fine for those driving in banned areas was enough to prevent incidents where someone could be injured or killed.

“It’s not safe to have people driving on the beach where there are lots of other users around,” she said.

Muir said people driving vehicles, motorbikes and three wheelers through the dunes to get to the beach have also been destroying restoration efforts.

“When they do they tear up all of the foliage, which is keeping our dunes together at the moment.”

Two-wheeled motorbikes are completely banned from Kapiti beaches.