PLAN30003: Brimbank Social Research Preliminary Report

Assessment 3: Final Preliminary Research Report Transport Disadvantage & Social Exclusion Brimbank, Heart of Melbourne's West

Author:

Derrick Lim

860296

PLAN30003 PLANNING SOCIAL RESEARCH WORKSHOP

Strategic Context:

Qualitative Research Methods: 1. Semi-structured interviews 2. Policy Assessment

Semi-structured interviews: Summary of findings from interviews: Policy Assessment:

What works and what didn’t?

Semi-structured interviews: Policy Assessment: Significance: 1. The outcome of spatial planning can lead to transport disadvantage and social exclusion.

2. Society’s expectation and needs should be better linked to spatial planning and policies.

Refined design research: Semi-structured interviews: Policy Assessment: Additional methods:

Appendix 1A: Semi-Structured Interview Responses Appendix 1B: Refined Semi-Structured Interview Questions Appendix 2: Refined Policy Assessment Framework

The purpose of this report is to produce comprehensive research detailing the issue of transport disadvantage and social exclusion experienced within the urban conurbation of Brimbank, the ‘Heart of Melbourne’s West’. The scope of this research is shown in Image 1.

Image 1: Scope of research.

The research question “How effective are current planning policy processes in the City of Brimbank at addressing the challenge of transport disadvantage and social exclusion?” will be explored as the core of this research paper. The theoretical foundations of social research such as qualitative research methodologies, analysis and ethics will be used to execute and analyse the comprehensive contemporary urban issue identified in Image 1. This is then followed by an evaluation of the results from data collection and a determination of how these collected data and analysis could contribute to informing future policies and other responses to this problem. It will also discuss the refinement of research methods used in this report as an evaluation for improving these methods further.

Image 2: Metropolitan and Local Context of Brimbank

Brimbank is a western suburb of Melbourne located 10 to 20 km west of Melbourne CBD (Image 2). It is a dynamic city that is rapidly growing which comprises of 19 different localities, each embedded with a distinct character, culture and heritage (Image 2). However, Brimbank has more low-socioeconomic households when compared to the whole of Melbourne (ABS, 2016).

Moreover, it also consists of many thinly spread developments of mainly one or two storeys and suffers from a disconnected public transport system (Brimbank City Council (BCC), 2014). As a result, the population in Brimbank has a higher dependency on cars, placing more pressure on disadvantaged residents despite hosting a larger percentage of residents who need assistance (i.e 6.4%) compared to Greater Melbourne levels (i.e 4.9%) (ABS, 2016).

This is significant as vulnerable residents have no viable alternative transport modes to travel to key services and employment unless they own a car or live close proximity to activity centres.

However, the dispersal of activity centres is limited. As a consequence, residents in disadvantaged areas of Brimbank are continuously facing transport disadvantage and social exclusion.

The use of qualitative methods is a major methodological stream to link planning policy processes in addressing transport disadvantage and social exclusion. To collect data, two semistructured interviews were carried out on a targeted sample followed by a policy assessment through sourcing relevant planning documents online. This method seeks to acquire data about the effectiveness of internal planning processes and decision making in regards to addressing these issues.

Hine and Mitchell (2003), in their book Transport Disadvantage and Social Exclusion conducted a semi-structured interview with local authority planners and transport operators as their chosen sample for part of their qualitative methodology. This was done so that an understanding of the issue can be gained from a policy and provider perspective. Hence, the most appropriate participants for this research method will be urban planners from Brimbank City Council.

Furthermore, I have decided to interview planners from both the strategic and statutory departments, as the strategic sector focused on long term planning objectives while statutory looks after the assessment and implementation of planning policies.

Five semi-structured interview questions (Image 3) were prepared prior to the interview sessions that will be conducted on planners from Brimbank City Council. The interview questions were carefully designed with the objective to understand planning processes better and assist at answering the research gap identified in this report. Conversely, the interview session is designed to last a minimum duration of 15 minutes with the targeted sample.

Image 3: Semi-structured interview questions

The strategy taken in contacting urban planners from Brimbank City Council was first made by making a direct conversation with their local council office to find out relevant planning departments and person to contact for this research. The request to talk to a strategic urban planner was then made by providing the reason and details of this research project. This process was repeated when interviewing a planner from the statutory department.

Planning policy documents, in this case, the Brimbank Planning Scheme is used as the main point of access to current policies covering transport and social issues. This is because as Bayar (2015) stated that the planning scheme is a planning tool frequently used and performed by urban planners for spatial planning. Therefore, it is an appropriate method for the purpose of this research. Moreover, the Planning Scheme is a planning document that sets out the objectives, strategies and policies regarding the management use of land and development, making it the definitive document to assess in regards to the focus of this research.

The Brimbank Planning Scheme can be accessed from the local council database that is made available to the public online. The database also consists of planning schemes for each local council across Victoria, making it easy and accessible for the public to be informed with planning strategies and key land issues in their local area.

To assess the effectiveness of planning policy documents, Dodson et. al (2004) had identified and developed several elements that policy should contain that demonstrates effective planning policy processes to addressing transport disadvantage and social exclusion. These elements identified by Dodson et. al (2004) will be used as criterias or also known as ‘theoretical’ codes to access the effectiveness of policies in Brimbank Planning Scheme at addressing the issues in this research. The policy assessment of the planning scheme is broken down into five different sections comprising of the entire Planning Ordinance (PS), Planning Policy Framework (PPF), Local Policy Framework (LPPF), Zonings as well as Overlays. The computer application Adobe Acrobat DC along with its built in ‘Advanced Search’ tool is used to test these theoretical codes within the planning document for the purpose of data analysis and evaluation.

The expectation of having a conversation with council staff members and the opportunity to interview urban planners immediately was challenging and was not anticipated during the design stage of this research methodology. Due to the fact that the meeting was for the purpose of conducting an interview, I was requested to send in my semi-structured interview questions through an email with the relevant department name attached to the title of the email for the request to be distributed appropriately within council. However, another formal conversation had to be made to council as there was hardly any reply from the relevant department after two weeks. As a result, the office administrator at that time was able to follow up my request and immediately, I received an invitation immediately from the statutory department where I could finally carry out my first interview.

Conversely, although the city strategy department declined the offer to take part in my interview after several weeks as per my email, I was very fortunate to have sourced contact details of the current senior strategic planner from my own personal professional network. However, it took me up to seven iterations of reaching out to the strategic planner in a span of a week before having my first successful conversation with her and then conducting the interview.

Both interviews conducted with the urban planners from Brimbank City Council lasted for about 15 to 25 minutes. The outcome of the semi-structured interview was very insightful and meaningful despite the frustrating and disappointing process it has to go through. See Appendix 1A for interviewed responses.

Diagram 1: Key things said by planners of Brimbank City Council from interviews

Both urban planners stressed that urban policies have to utilise a land use based approach to be considered effective in the planning scheme. Hence, social issues such as the lack of accessibility to services and jobs and affordable housing at well serviced locations has to be coming from a land use based approach to formulate effective policies. However, the current planning scheme is lacking at this. Specific locations of intervention need to be identified in strategies and policies to avoid vagueness of concepts and misinterpretation.

The provision of transport infrastructure is beyond the control of local authority and is managed

by State Government (Lucas, 2012). Therefore, the planning policy process for transport provision is the responsibility of the State and the improvement of these services can only be advocated at the local level. However, issues such as limited developable land and poor access to key transport nodes for land that is permitted to deliver housing diversity and social needs can be regulated and controlled by local authorities to benefit vulnerable residents.

There is currently an absence of transport and social policies within the planning scheme in the local provisions which address affordable housing and social exclusion as an effect of this outcome. This prevents statutory planners from implementing this objective when it is not legislated. However, this issue can be countered by referring to the state level policies (i.e the PPF), yet policies at the state level to address affordable housing were very general, and insufficient to implement the objective and strategy of planning for housing diversity and affordable housing efficiently.

Table 1: Result from the policy assessment.

The result of the policy assessment is summarised in Table 1 with a bar graph attached on the side showing the total occurance of each theoretical codes within each themes. The assessment shows that the PPF contains most of the content found in the entire planning ordinance while there were a several gaps identified in the LPPF based on the criteria themes such as public transport infrastructure provisions as well as social needs. Moreover, Zoning and Overlays contains a good amount of policies that addresses active transport and connectivity strategies. However, in regards to public participation within planning processes (Public Involved section), there was only content found within the Zoning and Overlays sections while none were found within the PPF and LPPF. This is because only clauses within the Zoning and Overlays provisions allows third party rights to be involved and object developments that could potential affect close proximity property owners.

Furthermore, there was no policy content for the operation of public transport as well as weak strategies to address social needs such as affordable housing and housing supply in the LPPF, Zonings and Overlays. Despite the fact that the theme ‘social needs’ in the table is the only section that has a 100% content coverage when compared to the overall content is the planning scheme, the sample size is relatively small as opposed to the other theme. This illustrates that each percentage value calculated in the table needs to take into consideration the overall sample size to assess the quality of output data.

Conversely, the significance of this framework also reflects upon the responses given by the urban planners through the interview sessions. For instance, social issues and needs within Brimbank are not very effectively translated into land use based policies. The assessment framework clearly demonstrates that the existing policies are currently lacking at addressing how issues such as transport disadvantage and social exclusion in terms of vulnerable residents living far away from key services being identified as a key land issue.

The interview sessions with planners was conducted very effectively and efficiently. However, the tone of the interviewees was occasionally hesitant and careful when giving out certain information because questions asked were found to be very general. Nevertheless, these urban planners were very well aware of the current urban issues within their local area and the limitations they have as urban planners within the broader political system. Most of the prepared interview questions did provide some meaningful answers and insights from the planners about the processes in formulation and implementation of urban policies within its urban conurbation.

Overall, the planners were very supportive at developing my understanding of the current

planning provisions and processes to enhance the quality of my research just as Hine and Mitchell (2003) anticipated.

However, several interview questions were too general and required more specific questioning regarding a specific public engagement program or strategy. Topics such as transport and social concerns were not the key strengths of a strategic planner unless they were land use based matters. Nevertheless, these planners were able to provide a number of key insights about how processes were mostly dictated by the State Government and how it should be followed accordingly. The State Government has set up an outline for planning policy processes and should also be understood by everyone such as the Planning Scheme Amendment process. The planner had also advised me to consider interview individuals of the state government transport department as part of this research.

Getting planners to partner with me by taking part in this semi-structured interview was challenging. This was due to the fact that there was no monetary benefit to the party, hence the poor response considering time consumption. Nevertheless, the approach to interview local authority urban planners as the targeted sample was very appropriate for this research topic to gain an understanding from a policy and provider perspective.

The framework developed by assessing urban policies in the planning scheme was effective at presenting the distribution for each identified individual criteria and sections found in the research by Dodson et al. (2004). Moreover, the assessment framework also did achieve a comparative analysis between each individual section clause which informs the importance and weighting given by policy makers, or in this case, urban planners in planning policy processes.

However, the criteria used was not very well balanced between the transport and social, although it could be expanded by conducting more research on theoretical codes used by social researchers. Nevertheless, the effectiveness of planning policy processes was able to be analysed in this policy assessment framework by evaluating the percentage of content in each criteria relating to transport disadvantage and social exclusion within the planning scheme.

Social exclusion does not necessarily associate directly with financial affairs but also a geographic dimension created by spatial planning (Bayar, 2015). The way land is currently zoned in Brimbank negatively affects residents well-being and accessibility to services and jobs.

For instance, there is currently up to 63% of residential lots under the Neighbourhood Residential Zone (NRZ), 33% in the General Residential Zone (GRZ) and only 4% in the Residential Growth Zone (RGZ) (Map 1.) (Brimbank City Council, 2014). While the NRZ is effective at maintaining the neighbourhood character within the suburb, the significantly high number of residential lots within NRZ restricts higher density living and larger scale developments. As a result, this limits the growth of housing supply as well as the access to services, facilities and public transport by vulnerable residents living in these areas. This is important as there is currently high percentage of the population who is disadvantaged by living in those areas (Map 3.) (ABS, SEIFA, 2016).

Map 1: Zoning Map of Brimbank

Map 2: Developable Land in Brimbank

Map 3: Brimbank IRS

In addition, the percentage of developable land within Brimbank today (i.e RGZ and Activity Centre Zone (ACZ) in Sunshine) is small and limited to cater for the population growth and social needs (Map 2.). This can also be supported from the conducted interviews and policy

assessment which shows that the current the RGZ and ACZ provisions are lacking in the delivery of affordable housing and housing diversity at key transport nodes. As a consequence, there is a spatial association between areas of disadvantage (ABS, SEIFA, 2016) and land zoned under the NRZ. GRZ, RGZ as well as the ACZ in Brimbank (Map 1 to 3).

Conversely, the spatial plans implemented in Brimbank affects residents travel behaviour to work. For instance, there is a higher percentage of residents who travel to work by public transportation who living in close proximity to a train station (Map 4). However, there is a greater percentage of people living in Brimbank that have higher dependency on cars due to the way land is being zoned and areas with limited access to good public transport services (Map 5.)

(ABS, 2016). This is significant as there is a need to own a car in areas that are already at disadvantaged while coping with the increasing pressure of unemployment and accessibility to services, displacing these vulnerable groups further away. Consequently, this heavily affects families with low income households as well as people with special needs. Living in these areas that are not well serviced with infrastructure due to the regulation imposed under the zoning results in transport disadvantage and social exclusion.

Map 4: Percentage of population travel to work by public transport (ABS, SA1, 2016)

Map 5: Percentage of population travel to work by cars (ABS, SA1, 2016)

Subsequently, due to the fact that policies are so focused on coming from a land-use based approach, the element of social factors is being neglected during the preparation of these spatial plans. Urban planners should balance the demand between political and public agenda when deciding to zone land as well as deciding appropriate projects to implement at the right time and place. Hence, there is a need to realise that vulnerable residents who suffer from

transport disadvantage can be an outcome from the ineffectiveness of spatial planning processes.

The processes of spatial planning have to negotiate well between planning institutions and the public to achieve social justice in the planning process. There is a demand for the realisation that social needs and issues are spatial problems as well. It is crucial to include society into the planning policy process to assist at creating awareness for the government to determine land use policies that accept and anticipates public connections.

The social processes that lead to those spatial plans creates this physical manifestation in the real world when it is merged with the planning processes. Bayar (2015) argued that spatial plans that are prepared at the present have direct and indirect impact on the future of the city, especially people who are living within close proximity to these problem areas. In addition, Lucas (2012) further claims that spatial planning can prioritise land over the other driven by political and public interest, neglecting areas with social issues and needs. Therefore the effective allocation of developments and services around key transport nodes as well as spatializing social issues is crucial during the process of land use management at addressing the issue of transport disadvantage and social exclusion.

There were several questions have been considered to be too general by the interviewed urban planners from Brimbank City Council. For instance, question number two in the questionnaire sought to find out whether the council had met the objectives in the planning scheme to deliver transport and social agendas. However, the planning scheme is a huge planning document which contains an abundance of strategies and policies. At this point the interviewee was in a very difficult position to answer this question whilst trying to avoid providing false information.

Consequently, preliminary work too understand the local provisions of Brimbank in the scheme should be carried out first by the researcher to help design a question that can focus on one objective or policy to discuss.

In addition, question number four seeks to gain an understanding of the effectiveness of public engagement programs with stakeholders and was also deemed to be an open-ended question when it should be more closed. This is significant as the strategic department had conducted many public consultations over the years and it was hard to discuss during the interview when there was no specific public consultation program chosen prior to the interview. Hence,

preliminary research should be conducted first at identifying consultation programs that council have carried out in regards to the issue of transport disadvantage and social exclusion.

Therefore, a recent public engagement program executed by council in conjunction to developing Plan Brimbank, a strategic document, was selected as a key focus and refinement for this question. See Appendix 1B for refined semi-structured interview questions.

Although the policy assessment framework developed in this research have demonstrated its usefulness and effectiveness in assessing transport and social policies, there is an opportunity for the framework to be expanded and enhanced. For example, the framework could be refined to include a new set of columns that refers to the Incorporated and Referenced Documents listed in the Planning Scheme. This is because these documents are part of the scheme although the text in the scheme are not taken literally from it. They form an important component of the scheme to be cross-referenced and used in a form of control for the use and development of land (Rowley, 2017). Therefore, assessing these documents on the basis of the criteria used as a means to analyse the proportion of content being translated into the scheme, could further enhance the iterations of data and strengthening the findings. See refined framework in Appendix 2 Furthermore, as a result of interviewing a statutory planning during the execution of the qualitative research method, Moreland City Council’s Planning Scheme was brought up in the discussion and it was recommended to use as a precedent for Brimbank. Hence, this policy assessment framework could be used to assess Moreland City Council’s planning scheme and then make a comparative analysis between the two local councils. This framework could be applied to any council of interest for assessing the effectiveness the council’s planning policies.

Diagram 2: Infographic of initial and future qualitative research methods.

According to Diagram 2, another qualitative research method that could be useful for this research topic is through what Johnson and Herath (2004) have referred to as ‘community mapping’. They took this approach to investigate the relationship between residents living in socio-economically disadvantaged areas and their accessibility to transport and services. This research method involves focus groups discussions as well as face to face interviews with residents to identify the perception of residents in regards to the level of access relative to public transport, services and employment. The benefit of taking this approach is that it enables researchers to clearly identify barriers such as the physical layout of transport infrastructure which deters people from using it. Moreover, it also allows researchers to uncover physical dimensions of the issue faced by residents unlike qualitative investigation discovered from data mapping using census data or even analysis solved by a Geographic Information System (GIS) accessibility model (Dodson et. al, 2004).

The two preliminary research methods performed in this research uncovered several preliminary conclusions about the qualitative methods used to assist in the research development of transport disadvantage and social exclusion in Brimbank. A semi-structured interview allowed the researcher to develop a greater understanding of the urban issue as well as developing suitable and useful semi-structured questions. Moreover, the results from the policy assessment reveals several policy gaps that both succeeded and failed to address transport disadvantage and social exclusion in Brimbank by employing a series of theoretical codes supported by scholarly literature. The significance of these results is that even with planning policy processes, the development of social processes is very dependent on planning processes and should not be separated when addressing the issue of transport disadvantage and social exclusion. Hence, the effectiveness of planning policy processes is built upon the notion that transport and social issues should be considered spatial and therefore integrated into statutory planning documents to be effectively implemented. Finally, the two qualitative methods executed in this preliminary research are being refined and justified for the future iterations of data collection and analysis along with additional methods that will heavily benefit the quality of this research.

.id (2016). SEIFA by profile area. Retrieved from https://profile.id.com.au/brimbank/seifadisadvantage-small-area Australian Bureau of Statistics (2017). 2016 Census QuickStats: Brimbank (C). Retrieved from http://quickstats.censusdata.abs.gov.au/census_services/getproduct/census/2016/quickstat/LG A21180 Bayar, R. (2015). The Relationship Between Social Exclusion and Spatial Planning. The West East Institute. Retrieved from https://www.westeastinstitute.com/wpcontent/uploads/2015/07/Rumeysa-BAYAR.pdf Brimbank City Council. (2014). Home and Housed. The Brimbank Housing Strategy. Melbourne, Vic.: Brimbank City Council Dodson, J., Gleeson, B., & Sipe, N. G. (2004). Transport disadvantage and social status: a review of literature and methods. Australia: Urban Policy Program, Griffith University.

Dodson, J., Buchanan, N., Gleeson, B., & Sipe, N. (2006). Investigating the Social Dimensions of Transport Disadvantage—I. Towards New Concepts and Methods. Urban Policy And Research, 24(4), 433-453. doi: 10.1080/08111140601035317 Hine, J. and F. Mitchell (2003). Transport Disadvantage and Social Exclusion: Exclusionary Mechanisms in Transport in Urban Scotland. Aldershot, UK, Ashgate.

Johnson, L. and S. Herath (2004). Big Roads, No Transport: A Report of the Goodna and Gailes Community Mapping for Transport Improvements Study; Research Monograph 5. Brisbane, Urban Policy Program, Griffith University (forthcoming).

Lucas, K. (2012). Transport and social exclusion: Where are we now?. Transport Policy, 20, 105-113. doi: 10.1016/j.tranpol.2012.01.013 Rowley, S. (2017). The Victorian planning system: Practice, problems and prospects.

Federation Press.

Victorian Auditor-General’s Office. (2017). Managing Victoria’s Planning System for Land Use and Development. Melbourne, Vic.: Andrew Greaves.

Interviewee 1: Name: Elizabeth Lewis Position: Senior Strategic Planning Officer of Brimbank City Council Time: 3-315pm Date: Friday, 17/5/19 1. How effective are the current policies at handling transport and social issues within Brimbank?

Policies in the planning scheme only has a big influence on land use outcomes. - everything needs to be land use based approach in order to be effective.

Any policy to be effective has to be tied to a land use outcome such as building high density buildings along key public transportation routes.

For the context of transportation provision, Planning for transport is directed by state planning policies and not local. Council can only advocate for better transport but is it up to the State Government to deliver it.

Council has authority to zone land, with appropriate/justified by research and then allow the market to choose where they want to develop based on where Council think developments should be. But note that Council is not a developer I encourage you to also interview the Department of Transport and PTV to understand how they are undertaking their processes in planning and policy making.

2. Do you think Council have met the objectives in delivering transport and social sector? Was the process effective to reach to that stage?

There are multiple and multiple objectives laid out in the Planning Scheme so it is very hard to tell you if we have met the objectives and I am unsure what you mean. I do not want to provide any information which may be misleading to your research unless they are specific.

Again, transport objectives are delivered by the State Government.

3. Are they any constraints during the process?

The planning scheme amendment. State government need to authorise the amendment which means Council does not have the ability to write whatever they want. This can limit some innovation within the Council but they know the set of rules which they need to abide by.

However, I do not see that as a major barrier to the planning policy processes.

4. Was there any engagement with stakeholders? Do you find public engagement effective during the process and why?

There is a formal exhibition during a Planning Scheme Amendment. Again, this is a very general question and different projects will have different stakeholder engagement.

Amendment C187 is not about the provision of transportation services because it is state government responsibility. This amendment was about community and infrastructure provision.

5. Are there any guidelines how people should understand planning policy processes?

Planning scheme amendment process which will inform private ownership of landowners.

DELWP has prepared a strategic planning amendment outline to the public which everyone including council will have to follow thoroughly.

6. How is the Transport Disadvantage 2017 and Community Engagement Policy incorporated into the Planning Scheme?

I do not know but they are not a planning document and has no land use based approach/strategies. The Social Planning Policy Officer will be able to help you answer that. *7. How can i learn more about this land use outcome or based approach strategy that you mentioned?

If you look at the Planning Scheme CL21.02 Key Land Issues, they are considered to be land use outcomes. *follow up question.

Interviewee 2: Name: Dhiraj Goti Position: Acting Coordinator of Statutory Planning of Brimbank City Council Time: 12:15-12.45pm Date: Tuesday, 14/5/19 1. How effective are the current policies at handling transport and social issues within Brimbank?

The current process in the statutory department is to assess the policies set out in the planning scheme and make sure planning permit applications fulfill the objectives of the planning schemes. The strategic department formulates and makes policies while we make decisions on which policy we want to implement based on key issues, priority and different departments such as housing.

Currently, we think that the current process in policy making is relatively effective (in between or maybe) however, people in council have different views so sometimes it can be hard to carry out certain policy advocacy.

The way to be effective at addressing these issues is to zone land appropriately close to facilities and public transport. We have no control over developers to develop.

2. Do you think Council have met the objectives in delivering transport and social sector? Was the process effective to reach to that stage?

Through zoning yes. For instance, NRZ for low density housing, GRZ for medium density housing and RGZ for higher density housing such as apartments. We access applications to develop land on these zones making sure it is appropriate in delivering optimum access to public transportation and services. We access different applications on different zones differently. We also only make decisions based on plans. We will also ask during the application how would this may bring social impacts to the surrounding neighbourhood We need to ensure that the State Policy level is met, so we only execute things based on the Planning Policy Framework (PPF) 3. Are they any constraints during the process?

The planning scheme has three tiers to it, federal, state and local. And for instance, the current local policy (LPPF) in Brimbank does not contain any affordable housing policies, however there are policies that want to encourage housing diversity. So we will refer to the state policies.

However again, the state policy level on affordable housing is very brief and not very specific, hence lacking information and effectiveness at implementing this.

It is hard to address certain prevailing issues within Brimbank today such as social exclusion when currently there is hardly any policies in place for it. We should have policies that address directly lower socioeconomic people however, there is a lack of this.

The site 541, Sydney Road at Coburg is a good example of how Moreland City Council have a social housing policy in their LPPF which was effective to deliver this project and addressing housing and social issues. You can find more details in Development Victoria website.

541 Sydney Road, Coburg; retrieved from https://www.development.vic.gov.au/residentialprojects/sydney-road A good example of a site that is appropriately zoned for affordable housing development. The site has an ‘Activity Centre’ zone which allows for and encourages affordable housing, car free transport and integrated mixed use developments.

4. Was there any engagement with stakeholders? Do you find public engagement effective during the process and why?

There is no engagement with stakeholders in stat planning. The only responsibility for the department is to assess policies against applications. Public engagement is the responsibility of the strategic department.

5. Are there any guidelines how people should understand planning policy processes?

The planning permit application process.

6. How is the Transport Disadvantage 2017 and Community Engagement Policy incorporated into the Planning Scheme?

We have planning advocacy and you can chat more with Glen Manner who is our Coordinator for Social Policy Advocacy at 9249 4388

1. How effective are the current policies at handling transport and social issues within Brimbank?

2. Do you think Council have met the objectives in Clause 21.10-1 at delivering sustainable transport through new developments?

3. Are they any constraints during the process?

4. Did you find the public engagement in Plan Brimbank/ Planning permit application process effective?

5. Are there any guidelines how people should understand planning policy processes?