COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENTS

We are committed to building open, transparent and active relationships with you – through meaningful Community Engagement.

The seven core principles underpinning Council’s Community Engagement Policy are that Community Engagement is:

� Strategy-led � Proactive � Open and inclusive � Easy � Relevant � Timely � Meaningful.

We engage with the community by:

� Building open, transparent and active relationships with you � Continuously exploring better, smarter ways that we engage with you. For example, extensive Community Engagement informed our Hornsby Park and Westleigh Park draft master plans, perhaps the two most ambitious projects ever undertaken by Hornsby Shire Council.

The draft master plans for Hornsby Park and Westleigh Park were unveiled for community feedback in April 2021.

Hornsby Park will be an exciting destination parkland that includes the rehabilitated Hornsby Quarry, while Westleigh Park will be a sports and recreation complex with multiple facilities. The estimated total cost for Hornsby Park is $130 million, and for Westleigh Park some $80 million.

A core component of any Council project of such magnitude is the extensive public consultation that was undertaken to make sure that the community has a sense of ownership by making you an active part of the project planning process.

Similarly, Hornsby Shire Council has prepared a Play Plan to guide the planning, design, management and maintenance of playgrounds and other play opportunities across the Hornsby Shire over the next 10 years.

Community engagements

Play is essential for people of all ages. It helps adults and children to build new skills, socialise, get active and have fun!

So, when “planning for play” it is essential that Council both hears the opinions and benefits from the experience of those who use our playgrounds, not merely deliver playground infrastructure.

As part of preparing the Play Plan, the community was surveyed extensively to establish your needs, preferences and future aspirations for public play spaces and facilities.

Other major projects to benefit from Council’s commitment to Community Engagement have been our Draft Rural Lands Study and Brooklyn Place Plan.

The extensive Community Engagement undertaken as part of the Rural Lands Study was to understand how people living, working and visiting Hornsby Shire’s rural areas view their local places. And to test whether proposed Council’s draft landscape boundaries and character descriptions “made sense” to the local community and to identify any improvements that could be made.

Similarly, Council recently developed a discussion paper for the Brooklyn Place Plan – a road map to prepare Brooklyn for a vibrant future that offers a vision and principles for consultation while seeking feedback and agreement to guide future decisions.

These and many other examples demonstrate how Community Engagement, through compromise, collaboration and “joined-up thinking” help us all to unite and develop solutions that enable more wins for everyone and to create positive long-term change and success!