2017-04-11 Services & Organisation Committee Agenda

SERVICES & ORGANISATION COMMITTEE MEETING AGENDA                                                    11 APRIL 2017


3                        COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT POLICY REVIEW
DOCUMENT INFORM AT ION




Author                              Community Engagement Manager, Debra Bambrook
                                    Executive Office

Index                               ECM/ Subject/ Council Policies

Attachments                         1.    Revised Community Engagement Policy


EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Not applicable.

RECOMMENDATION
That Council note the report by the Community Engagement Manager to the Services &
Organisation Committee Meeting dated 11 April, 2017 and:
A.                       Adopt the revised Community Engagement Policy provided at Attachment 1 to the report;
                         and
B.                       Authorise the Chief Executive Officer to revise the organisational guidelines and community
                         engagement tools that support the implementation of the Policy.



REPORT
1     Rationale
A review of the Community Engagement Policy has been undertaken for the following reasons:
1.    The original Policy was endorsed by Council on 28 August 2014 in the first year of Noosa
      Council re-forming after de-amalgamation. The policy is over 2 ½ years old and the context
      has changed;
2.    A new Council was elected in 2016 and there is a need to align the Policy with the new
      Corporate Plan and the new Council’s vision for community engagement;
3.    The original Policy contained a high level of detail which is now redundant due to the
      development of a range of supporting documentation such as the framework, toolkit and an
      organisational procedure, and:
4.    There was a need to provide a revised set of over-arching principles to guide community
      engagement practices at Noosa Council into the future.

The amendments made to the Policy will inform changes to supporting documents to ensure
consistency and clear guidance for community engagement practices at Noosa Council.

2                        Amendments

The Community Engagement Policy has been pared back to focus more on overarching principles
and less on defining community engagement context, engagement activities, roles and
responsibilities because these are addressed in supporting documents. There is more focus on
building social capital and detailed planning including stakeholder analysis to better understand
and communicate with our community.




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