Our community has an important role to play in shaping the city where they live. Community engagement is a core component of our planning and decision-making processes and operates as a partnership between Council and our community.
Keeping residents informed, listening to their concerns and involving them in making decisions has a significant impact on the overall satisfaction the community has with us. This is illustrated through the results of the independent AlburyCity Community Satisfaction Survey conducted every two years. Consecutive results show the ‘provision of Council information to the community’ and ‘community input
into council decision-making’ are consistently among the top drivers of community satisfaction.
Our Vision is to ‘proactively and consistently engage with the community during the development of plans, policies and projects that have the potential to affect the Albury community’.
Our Objectives are:
- To provide a clear strategic direction and consistent message for the way we engage with the community.
- To improve the level of satisfaction the community has with us in relation to community engagement.
- To ensure community engagement is based on the social justice principles of access, equity, participation and rights.
- To utilise the IAP2 core values when developing community engagement initiatives
- To provide our people with scaled opportunities for engaging with the community.
- To ensure that our community engagement considers opportunities for ‘smart’ engagement techniques.
Research into methods of engagement has found that community groups, individuals and organisations operate differently and the methods we use to engage should reflect this research. The methods also need to be consistent with the principles of the International Association of Public Participation (IAP2).
The AlburyCity Community Engagement Plan is reviewed every four years to ensure relevance to community needs and the alignment of council projects and services with the Community Strategic Plan (CSP) – ‘Albury 2030’. In addition to the broader Community Engagement Plan, a separate Stakeholder Engagement Plan is developed every four years to specifically guide our community consultation for the development of the CSP. The CSP Stakeholder Engagement Plan considers the social justice principles of access, equity, participation and rights, and identifies the relevant stakeholders and methods used to engage. Effective community engagement will strengthen and enhance the relationship between communities and AlburyCity through greater transparency, collaboration and trust.
In addition to our wider engagement approaches outlined above, our Community Participation Plan outlines how and when we engage our community across relevant land use and town planning functions such as consideration of development applications and exhibition of draft strategic plans like Planning Proposals, Local Environmental Plans (LEPs) and Development Control Plans (DCPs).