Community Engagement Policy - Policies, Plans and Strategies directory

Community engagement has become an essential part of government planning, policy development and service delivery. It improves the quality of decisions and is an important part of being responsive to community and stakeholder needs.

Council’s Community Engagement Framework consists of the following components:

1. Community Engagement Policy - provides direction for engagement through its guiding principles, for staff and consultants who have responsibilities for organising Council's community engagement opportunities.

2. Community Engagement Protocol - guides Council staff and consultants on when and how they must engage stakeholders for different decision types. Similarly, from a community perspective it sets out in one place, how and when stakeholders can particulate in different projects and decisions.

3. Community Engagement Toolkit (internal resource) - includes staff guidelines and procedures for employing the engagement methods described in the Protocol.

We prepare project-specific engagement strategies per project/decision type, which are ‘statements of intent’ to the community and stakeholders about how we will conduct community engagement relative to the project/decision type.