Encroachments Policy And Organisational Procedures

Frank Wilkie157:43

That is unanimous. Thank you, Rebecca and Kim. Thanks Kim. Thank you Kim. Next up we have encouragement policy and organisational procedures. Again we have Mel and Rebecca and we have some COIs.

Brian Stockwell182:29

This is a big tick in terms of a long-term very annoying problem in this Council. So one of the first two years of me being on started Council to get community groups complaining about encroachments and how that impacts on their ability to take foreshores. We know that one of the things that a policy does is makes consistency across the whole of our organisation. And it's not telling anyone anything they don't know, but in the absence of this moved by Councillor Stockwell. Different approaches and moved not by always getting a really good outcome for the environment, the park, the road, whatever. So now we've got a consistent approach. That's one governance really well addressed. You know, but, and also I think the risk assessment approach is really valuable now. It's taken a bit longer to get to this point than I would have liked. I could have put in a budget bid four years ago, five years ago. But what we've now got is good. The risk assessment approach and the criteria are really useful to both guide staff. But if you are a person that has got an encroachment, it should also guide you. Shouldn't wait for a Council staff member to come knocking on the door. You should say, oh, okay. I'm high risk. I'm medium risk. I need to do something about it. And then it also will give them a list of identified preferred species. So it's a really good list of native species that are suitable for our Shire that people can look at. We've had the discussion section about vegetable and productive gardens on the road verges. That's a great discussion to have. It was one the Council has brought up. I won't say that we had to convince staff, but we certainly made the decision. Made it clear that we supported, you know, and now the policy, now the procedures say Council supports vegetable and productive gardens on road verges that are well maintained, well and consistently maintained, are of neat appearance, meet all the requirements that applied apply to a private gardens and landscaping and road verges, and can be picked by children on the way home. No, the last one's mine. But it's not a big thing in our Shire at the moment, in other areas it's bigger, where there's not a lot of space, but it is something that if it's not native, it should be productive. And to me that's a big one. We also know there's been a lot of calls for compliance action, so we started the Noosa River Stakeholder Advisory Committee and the first thing they came to consensus on was the need to look at encroachments on the river and particularly quite a lot that are in the Frying Pan area. And so this policy and procedures give us a framework to address that. And I'm not going into any great detail but of course the eastern beaches are going to be a strong place because the draft coastal management plan and the audit done with that identified that 90% of properties along the eastern beaches some form of encroachment that's massive and that's you know we have to start in the highest risk areas and that's what this policy and procedures will do it will guide staff will make it really clear to individuals who some of them, some a lot of those encroachments probably existed before the current people own the block of land or the house and so it will give them a clear indication what's acceptable what's not and as I said as Councillor Wilkie has to point out our approach is first to make sure people understand what the policy says seek their voluntary compliance and use what we already have in existence under local law for as the enforcement mechanism. If needed.

Okay, so the encroachments policy was. Has got quite a bit of background in the CHAP and also the Environment Strategy and one of the directions was that the coastal management plan actually included an encroachments policy. Now in the first Councillor workshop that we had at the beginning of last year, it became really clear that it was a Shire-wide issue that needed to escape from the confines of the coastal management plan. And that's what we've got here now. We've got a Shire-wide policy that applies to all Council managed land, not just bush land. And I guess the real opportunity here is for us to work with the pieces of Council land that are in our. Neighbourhoods. So this is the bit of bush land out the back of your house. This is the trees that you walk under when you go to school. This is the space out the front of your house where the services, the public services are delivered to your house, be it Council lighting, being able to move through the community, being able to talk to your neighbours and I guess that's why it's so important. Also we've had quite a bit of community input asking for us to better manage our encroachments in our Council managed land. Bushland has been quite a focus for quite a few of these groups but we're also getting a lot of requests to deal with issues in our road reserves. We did a little bit of work around how many of these matters we're receiving and we're receiving at least a hundred every year in many cases we're having to deal with those situations again and because they're not being neatly resolved community so we've also had a lot of requests from our Council officers they want us really strong frame a firm framework that allows them to deal consistently with these issues that it doesn't matter what kind of encroachment it is it doesn't matter who's doing the encroachment it doesn't particularly matter where it is if it's having that level of community impact or on the environment if it's hindering our ability to achieve some of our strategic outcomes that's what should be the driver around what we're doing so we've created a bit of a risk assessment framework that allows us to do that consistent assessment and that's what we've got here it's been broken into two sections the policies says what we're trying to achieve and then the procedures actually break it down into the different types of Council managed land to describe how we're going to achieve those outcomes and I guess the biggest thing is that we actually if these encroachments are in the way of achieving these outcomes achieving these community or environmental outcomes that we do have a recovery process in place as well and I guess that also ties in with the other aspect of this is that the implementation of the plan particularly the recovery is funded by Council that's been a major hindrance in the past every bit of bushland is different it needs a site specific approach to how we just haven't had the capacity to provide that level of input back into the enforcement process and that's part of what we've done here is actually having somebody that specialises in that gives that framework yeah it back a little? And yeah and this is while it's a new policy it's not actually we're not actually giving us power giving ourselves powers that we didn't already have it's all under local law for which is roads reserves and other Council managed land and assets and it helps manage protect the values of those facilities in those areas by managing access and by restricting the kinds of activities that the community can take in those areas typically that's driving vehicles in areas outside of those designated for it say the constructed portions of roads car parks that kind of thing and also the type of impacts that can cause problems typically vegetation damage any kind of improvements or encroachments that kind of thing and yeah that's where we are with the framework.