2019-06-11 Planning & Environment Committee Agenda

PLANNING & ENVIRONMENT COMMITTEE MEETING AGENDA                                  11 JUNE 2019


Community Consultation to inform the development of the Draft Environment Strategy
A number of community forums and workshops were held in 2017 to discuss the scope, themes
and priorities for the Environment Strategy prior to its development. A total of 26 community
groups participated.
A discussion paper on the Environment Strategy was distributed to community groups for
comment in April 2018 and broader community consultation through Your Say Noosa was
undertaken in July and August 2018. Council received more than 60 comments on priorities for
inclusion in the draft strategy, based on the questions;
1.   What are the top three (3) most important environmental issues to you in Noosa Shire?
2.   What other issues do you think are important in managing the environment?
This feedback formed the backbone of the development of the Draft Environment Strategy.
Further workshops with community groups were held in December 2018 to refine environmental
management and sustainable living issues.


Community consultation on Draft Environment Strategy
A Draft Environment Strategy was adopted for the purposes of seeking public feedback at the
Ordinary Meeting 21 February 2019. The draft was available for broad public consultation
through Your Say Noosa between 25 February and 25 March 2019. The consultation period was
promoted through Your Say Noosa, had two media releases that were well picked-up locally,
Facebook posts, and a presentation at the local forum of environment groups.
Two questions were asked as part of the feedback;
1.   What are some of the key implementation actions that would help achieve the Outcomes
     stated in the Environment Strategy?
2.   What other comments do you wish to make relating to the Strategy?
The Draft Environment Strategy was downloaded 87 times and 20 written responses were
received. This was a relatively low response given the effective promotion, some informal
feedback after the consultation period ended suggested that some key environment groups did
not provide a response as they had been so involved in the process already and had provided
significant input through the strategy development.
All feedback was discussed and analysed by the internal working group developing the strategy
and appropriate changes were made to the final version of the Environment Strategy. The
feedback also informed the development of the implementation plan.
Public feedback was generally supportive of the Draft Environment Strategy and constructive in
nature. The feedback received was quite diverse, however some areas of concern were
consistent across multiple responses:
   Effectiveness of planning and development controls within Noosa.
   The sustainable management of the Noosa River.
   Improving the management of waste in the Noosa community.




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