COMMUNITy Award CORPORATE &
Award Booklet
COMMUNITy PLANNING CORPORATE & Award
ABOUT THIS AWARD
The Corporate and Community Planning Award celebrates the success of individuals and teams working in the Local Government Corporate and Community Planning sector in Victoria.
This initiative of LGPro’s Corporate Planners Network Special Interest Group focuses on local government initiatives that demonstrate excellence in the areas of:
• Council planning
• Community planning
• Integrating Council and community planning
• Performance measurement and management
• Service planning, delivery, or enhancement
• Sustainable community involvement in Council and community planning
• Planning for environmental sustainability
• Planning for business transformation.
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COMMUNITy PLANNING CORPORATE & Award
WINNER
South Gippsland Shire Council Shaping South Gippsland
With a new Councillor group elected following two years of administration, South Gippsland Shire Council began rebuilding community connection and trust through a process of integrated plan development while a comprehensive transition program was underway.
At the beginning of their term, the new group of Councillors made the ambitious decision to align the plans in November 2021, with the aim of having these adopted by June the following year to maximise the outcomes of their three-year terms.
Over seven months, the organisation engaged with 3,356 people – 11 per cent of the population. Shaping South Gippsland was the Shire’s largest community engagement campaign to date, delivered in record time.
Councillors and staff worked collaboratively to design and implement an extensive and proactive campaign that leveraged existing community feedback exercises while developing new approaches along the way.
A shift to cross-team collaboration was created, culminating in fortnightly group meetings that brought together staff from across the organisation together to achieve a shared objective. Councillors meanwhile took ownership of the process and identified the need to engage first-hand with the community, with two to four Councillors present at every engagement event.
The campaign was delivered largely in-house, with minimal budget, using existing resources, and with a supporting investment in long-term skills development to build the organisation’s ongoing capacity.
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COMMUNITy PLANNING CORPORATE & Award
HIGHLY COMMENDED
Central Goldfields Shire Council Welcome to Central Goldfields
Central Goldfields Shire Council partnered with community leaders and businesses over 12 months in 2022 to attract skilled migrants to the municipality.
The pilot project came in response to the staffing and skills shortages plaguing the Victorian Local Government sector and extending to local businesses, big and small. Over a number of years, a dialogue between Council and local business leaders has sought solutions to the increasingly complex issues behind the attraction and retention of staff, particularly in skilled roles, from qualified professionals in allied health to accountants and skilled tradespeople.
The project sought to sustainably promote and retain a younger, more culturally diverse community over time, encouraging skilled workers to live and work in Central Goldfields long term with the aid of a ‘Relocation Playbook.’ Solving such a complex issue has been a work in progress but has set the groundwork for tackling key problems like access to housing not listed on the market.
The project was filmed by Blackfella Films for a documentary which is expected to be screened in late 2023, feeding into the advocacy effort the Shire will bring to the State and Commonwealth Governments for support.
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COMMUNITy PLANNING CORPORATE & Award
FINALISTS
(IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER BY COUNCIL)
Macedon Ranges Shire Council Cool Changes
Macedon Ranges Shire is geographically decentralised, located either side of the Great Dividing Range. The Shire consists of a series of townships of varied size, with numerous small, distinct communities of differing demographics. Each community is affected by climate change in a different way.
The unique approach of the Cool Changes community engagement program gave this unique mix of residents the tools to shape each of their communities’ responses to climate change.
The program empowered residents by establishing a shared vision for the future of climate action through the creation of local Community Climate Action Plans. These plans were developed through a community-led planning process, providing a customised, place-based approach to address climate change. Since commencing in 2018, the program has facilitated the creation of seven Community Climate Action Plans, identified 96 prioritised local actions, involved 363 registered participants, and resulted in four new sustainability groups.
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COMMUNITy PLANNING CORPORATE & Award
FINALISTS
Nillumbik Shire Council Communities First Program
The recent history of Nillumbik Shire has been punctuated by disasters and their emergency responses, from floods and storms to bushfires, including the devastating 2009 Black Saturday bushfires which resulted in significant loss of life.
In instances like these, knowing who your neighbours are, where to find support, and how to help each other is a critical part of the emergency response and recovery at the community level.
The Communities First Program began in 2020 with the aim of increasing community emergency resilience throughout the Shire by facilitating community-led, social connection-building initiatives.
The Communities First team supports Nillumbik residents to lead projects and activities that build connection and help them recognise, evaluate, and collectively acknowledge their assets and abilities, engendering community confidence and competence to better prepare for emergencies. In the truest sense of community resilience, this allows communities to sustainably recover from emergencies without council dependence.
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COMMUNITy PLANNING CORPORATE & Award
FINALISTS
Local governments represent local democracy, offering communities an avenue of shaping the planning and decision-making behind the places they live.
Mornington Peninsula Shire Council’s inaugural Citizens’ Panel in 2021 was a unique initiative that sought to bring community members directly to the decision-making table.
The Local Government Act 2020 adopted a principlesbased community engagement framework that recommends deliberative engagement be at the forefront of council planning and decision-making, mirroring the growing community expectation to be more involved in
council decisions, prompting the internal push for an inclusive and collaborative engagement mechanism.
The now-annual initiative works by recruiting a group of community members to consider issues with the goal of either coming to a consensus or an acceptable compromise for Council consideration. Panellists are randomly selected by an independent provider which makes a selection to represent the demographics of the area, considering diverse attributes, from age to gender.
Now in its third year, the yearly initiative continues critical dialogue and trust-building with the community.
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Mornington Peninsula Shire Councill Mornington Peninsula Citizens’ Panel