Strong community focus for council

Published on 08 September 2022

Hepburn Shire Council heard loud and clearly through the Hepburn Together project to develop our Council Plan and Community Vision that our community wants to be more engaged and informed in and about the decisions of Council.

Council has seen considerable community input since adopting a Community Engagement Policy 18 months ago. Council’s online engagement platform, Participate Hepburn, has had almost 65,000 page views across 66 projects, including more than 24,500 unique visitors since it went live in early 2021.

Impressive given a shire population of 16,604. Mayor, Cr Tim Drylie, said Council has a range of avenues for the community to provide input on Council projects.

“Participate Hepburn allows the community to engage with us at any time – day or night. We understand the value and importance of engagement, and this has been a really successful way for the community to provide input into current topics,” said Cr Drylie.

“There have been more than 4,500 contributions through Participate Hepburn via survey responses, maps, polls and forums. It’s been a really powerful tool to hear from the community,” he said.

“We also send out an e-newsletter Hepburn Life to more than 3,500 subscribers on a monthly basis and have recently redeveloped our website with a focus on the information that our community wants and needs,” he said.

Council isn’t only focusing on online avenues, but also incorporates face-to-face engagement.

“We have monthly Meet the Mayor and Listening Post sessions in our key townships, where community members can come along, meet with Councillors and staff, learn about projects and raise issues,” said Cr Drylie.

“The feedback we have received about these sessions has been very positive,” he said. “We’ve also incorporated drop-in sessions as part of our engagement when developing Council strategies and policies.

Over the last 12 months this has included Positive Ageing Strategy, Youth Strategy, Early and Middle Years Strategy and our Aquatics Strategy. The development of Council’s Sustainable Hepburn Strategy, which encompasses waste, biodiversity, environment and climate change, is an example of how Council used deliberative engagement elements to maximise community involvement.

“We established community reference groups to guide the development of Sustainable Hepburn. These groups worked to ensure the strategy reflected the priorities and sentiment of the community, but also allowed us to capitalise on the creativity and expertise of local people to develop local solutions. This was a very broad strategy and had input from hundreds of people across the Shire,” said Cr Drylie.

Staff have created and distributed thousands of conversation cards, fliers, postcards, posters, signs, printable surveys, discussion papers, conversation guides, advertisements and other collateral, with hundreds of emails and phone calls being made to stakeholders, community groups and residents.

“We’re continuing to innovate and grow the skills of staff and Councillors in community engagement. It’s important that we give residents the opportunity to share their thoughts and expertise, so we can take community knowledge into consideration and act on it when making decisions,” he said. Council’s approach to community engagement is based on the best practice IAP2’s Spectrum of Public Participation.

Councils’ website and Participate Hepburn site provide links to engagement opportunities and how to complete service requests