Eastern Beaches Foreshore Reserves Management Plan - Community Consultation Overview And Proposed Changes

So, we've been on a long journey with this one. We've done several Council workshops and we've talked about this one a lot. So, the eastern beaches foreshore management plan is implementing elements of the Coastal Hazards Adaptation Plan, primarily where we're looking at managing these foreshore areas as natural areas. So, we've developed a scope and a framework that focused on that alongside making sure that our public accesses worked really well for our community as well, so providing access to our gorgeous beaches, but also improving how that sits in the landscape. So, we've come to. Gone through the consultation process based on this document and we've put together some information around what we did for our consultation process, but also the results that we got and how we adapted the plan after we got that input. So primarily we conducted um three round table three community round tables and a couple of focused round tables. We ran a survey that had, I think it was something like. 204 respondents and the round tables had about 42 actual active participants and we also had 92 written submissions as well. So we got a really deep base of information. Based on a broad range of the population. So I really do feel that we got a great range of information to inform that review. Some of the main points of the input was a desire to change the scope, focus and objectives of the plan. Some community members felt that all programs and activities and planning for the eastern beaches should all be in one document. We felt that might be a bit unwieldy. A desire for consultation earlier in the process of the plan, misdirected priorities, overemphasis and exaggeration of the issues of encroachments, a desire for action on encroachments and actions tied to objectives, so making it much clearer how the management actions were achieving the objectives of the plan, and the need for more on-ground works and greater efforts to control weeds. Weight. So in response to that the primary changes, and I mean there's been lots of little changes as well, but the primary changes were the scope of the plan has been better described to how it sits in conjunction with say the Coastal Hazards Adaptation Plan, implementation plan, the Coastal Monitoring Plan, the works that are being done by the infrastructure services say around say realigning creek mouths and that kind of thing. Statements about the environmental values and climate change have been better referenced so just showing exactly where we got those points from. Condition mapping, restoration targets, ecological restoration plans and all the on-ground work so this is how all of this strategic stuff gets to on-ground outcomes are better described. Objectives section being better linked to the management outcomes and we did that by including outcomes under each theme that sort of gave more detail to the primary objective that was being implemented theme and I guess one of the biggest changes is that the encroachments policy has come entirely out of the Eastern Beaches Foreshore Management Plan it's now Shire-wide it now covers all Council managed bushland land so that's probably the biggest thing from where we started.