Page 885 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 9 March 2016
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The directorate commenced a comprehensive community and key stakeholder engagement process for the first phase of the village’s plan this year. As part of that process, EPD hosted two focused workshops with the local community at Tharwa, which were both very well attended. These workshops specifically discussed with the community what Tharwa’s future could be, what they liked about their village, and what things they believed could be improved. I am pleased to confirm that the local community enthusiastically took part in both workshops and that whilst the discussions were often robust, the community did welcome the opportunity to voice their ideas and aspirations for their village.
The government has invested time and effort delivering and developing effective community and stakeholder engagement processes and practices. To date, the Environment and Planning Directorate has had a highly successful track record in engaging with key parties for the testing and development of planning policy and advice throughout the ACT. To extend these successful practices further, the directorate has invested in a nationally recognised online engagement tool, EngagementHQ. This online tool provides access to a broad range of feedback, information, communication and analysis tools that provide a track record of getting communities involved in community-focused projects such as the planning study that is currently underway for Tharwa. The key strategy for the new engagement tool was to open up further opportunities for the community to offer feedback on ACT planning consultations, especially for people who do not wish to attend public forums or who are unable to attend, for a variety of reasons.
The total number of visitors to date on the Tharwa EngagementHQ site is 571 visits, made up of 38 engaged visitors, including 34 survey responses, and 200 informed visits, which means that the participants have been further involved with the tool. This represents a very positive response to this type of online engagement and provides the community of Tharwa with direct opportunity to participate in the development of a strategic plan for their village.
The Environment and Planning Directorate has also had targeted meetings with key stakeholders as part of the first phase of community engagement for the village plan. These included several meetings with Mr Val Jeffery from the Tharwa general store, Cuppacumbalong Homestead precinct and Outward Bound Australia and in the coming weeks will include Aboriginal representatives from the King Brown tribal group. The Environment and Planning Directorate has also offered individual briefings to the community upon request. I am happy to confirm that the directorate has met with individual Tharwa community members.
The Environment and Planning Directorate is now developing a draft village plan for Tharwa, taking into consideration the recent community and whole-of-government feedback. It is anticipated that the draft village plan will be released later in 2016, and the community will again be invited to provide comment and feedback on the proposal. Phase 2 of the community engagement on the draft village plan will be for a period of six weeks, and I encourage the local community to again participate in the development of the final report. In the meantime, the local community may continue to provide input through the online engagement tool and haveyoursay.plan-ning.act.gov.au.
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