By now, most councils will be close to finalising the Community Strategic Plan prepared on behalf of their local community.
Before it goes to the elected council for formal endorsement and then to publication, it’s useful to do one last check that the draft is complying with the legislated requirements and achieving the intent of the IP&R framework.
Here’s a quick checklist to make sure. If you can answer YES to each of these, then you can take comfort that you’ve got a good practice CSP:
- The CSP is a community plan, not a Council plan – this includes how the plan is branded and who appears within its introductory pages (council logos, councillor photos, GM messages etc all give the impression that it is a council plan, so avoid these in the CSP).
- The CSP has at least a ten year horizon – and given the current council term is shorter than usual, consider a planning horizon that will still have ten years’ or more at the next CSP review so that a refresh may be all that’s needed in a couple of years’ time.
- A variety of stakeholders, including other levels of government, business and industry, community organisations and so on are identified as contributing to the delivery of CSP strategies – council should not and cannot be responsible for achieving all of the CSP. The Delivery Program is where council identifies its role and commitment to delivery within available resources. Council may be one of the stakeholders identified for contributing to the CSP, but should not predominate across the document.
- Relevant State and regional plans and priorities have been taken into consideration in the development of the CSP – ie, what is the State Government planning for our region that may have local impacts that should be considered in our CSP, and what priorities exist that our local community can contribute to?
- The CSP reflects the outcomes of the community engagement activities that were undertaken to inform it – ie, a summary of issues or themes identified is provided and its clear how the identified goals and proposed strategies address these issues in some way.
- The CSP includes a community vision statement – this is not council’s vision, but rather a community vision articulated by and with the local community for the LGA as a whole.
- The CSP makes clear what the community’s goals are and how they will be achieved – ie CSP goals include targets (a goal to reduce our unemployment rate should set a target of what level we’re trying to get to), and there are strategies assigned to each goal to demonstrate what will be done and who will do it to contribute to the achievement of each goal.
- A method of assessing whether the community’s goals are being achieved over time is included in the CSP – for this to work, identifying a baseline will also be important. For example, if the community aspires to growing its local economy, a baseline will need to be recorded which identifies the number of businesses in existence now, the unemployment rate now, the value of local commodities produced annually now so that this information can be captured again at reporting time in the future, and it will be clear if ‘growth’ has occurred as hoped. It will also be important to identify and record a data source for each assessment method.