Firstly we had the drought and a devastating bushfire season, then floods, and now more reason to use the term “unprecedented” with the arrival of the corona virus phenomenon.

What does it all mean for the local government sector? And how do we carry on with any semblance of normality when ‘normal’ as we know it seems to be a thing of the past?

By no means am I underestimating the enormity of the impact that COVID-19 is having on the local government sector, and indeed on our communities generally. However, there can be a tendency in times like these to focus all of our energies on the crisis, and neglect the tasks that will enable us to recover and carry on later.

Unless we reach a situation where the Government excuses councils from meeting their legislative obligations, then all NSW councils will be undertaking a full IP&R process in the lead up to and immediately following the local government elections in September this year.

How to plan for this in the context of COVID-19?

Community engagement is an important underpinning process in the development of a council’s suite of IP&R documents. But, by its very nature, it often entails bringing people together to discuss and debate priorities and strategies. In these times of social distancing and quarantine, bringing people together physically will likely be out of the question. For those councils that rely heavily on ‘town hall’ meetings and community events, this will be a significant challenge as those gatherings dry up. However, many councils have long utilised a range of other approaches to engage their communities that don’t rely on physical gatherings.

The first thing to ask yourself is: “what is the purpose, or the intended outcome, of our upcoming community engagement activities?” In the IP&R context, what most councils will need to know soon includes:

• What information do we need from our community in order to prepare our upcoming ‘end-of-term’ or ‘State of the Shire/City’ report?
• How recent is our community-sourced intelligence regarding expected service levels and acceptable asset condition that will enable us to prioritise and allocate resources?
• How well do the themes, priorities and strategies of our current Community Strategic Plan resonate today?
• What content in our current Community Strategic Plan feels very outdated and redundant?
• What is clearly missing or too light on? What emerging issues do we need to consider?

These questions will apply to all NSW councils in the coming months. And by knowing the questions, you can better design the processes that will enable them to be answered.

What tools does your council have at its disposal to enable community engagement where people don’t come together physically? It’s important to remember here that engagement is a two-way conversation, so while a website or a newspaper column, or a flyer mailed out with the rates notice may be useful ways of imparting information, they are not (by themselves) engagement tools.

If you haven’t already, consider the following to enable a two-way discussion:

• An online ‘have your say’ page – post key planning questions (a new one every week or so), and provide either voting buttons against a range of options AND/OR provide an opportunity for free text responses to elicit community ideas about options for consideration.
• Use social media to ask specific questions related to your planning, and collate the comments as your feedback (voting buttons can be used here too).
• Include short, targeted surveys in your regular communications with the general community (tear off and email/post response).
• Via other channels (eg social media), ask community members to opt in to a more comprehensive process and provide detailed options papers and other information with template response pages for them to complete and return (this can all be done electronically).
• Send targeted questions to key stakeholder groups and organisations to assist in identifying current issues and priorities, and propose strategies for responding. These key stakeholders may also hold valuable information regarding the State of the Shire/City report they can share with you.
• Work with your Joint Organisation or other regional council organisation and seek their support to engage with State agencies on behalf of all councils in your area.

If your council has the resources to do so, consider engaging an online engagement expert to help you to establish a robust mechanism for engaging with your community in the virtual world.

As more and more people are asked (or request) to work from home, take advantage of this to utilise their time doing desk-top research that will support the next CSP development. This could be a great opportunity to redeploy staff who would otherwise have frontline roles that are temporarily suspended (including staff who might not have been directly involved in your council’s IP&R work before). Tasks they might undertake from their isolated home office include:

• Identifying all the State and national agency plans that have a regional application to your area – pull out the themes, priorities and strategies that might apply in your local planning context.
• Searching online for local NGOs and community organisations’ strategic plans or ‘priority statements’ that will help to identify current themes and priorities that others in the community are working on locally.
• Doing a search of the ABS’s website and collating all the contemporary statistical data about your local government area.
• Doing a search of NSW Planning’s demographic information and collating the information (including projections and forecasts) that will assist in your long-term community planning.
• Checking out how councils around you or like yours have prepared their suites of IP&R documents in the past – get inspired about different ways you might present information more effectively.
• Connecting with chambers of commerce and industry bodies to gauge the local impacts of these recent events, and collaboratively design short and longer-term solutions to support those impacted most. These solutions will no doubt carry through to the next cycle of IP&R and be key considerations in planning for strong and resilient communities into the future.

Now is a good time to make contact with other IP&R practitioners in your region and start (or continue) a virtual IP&R network to support one another to clarify tasks and share ideas over the coming months.

Assuming the legislated timeframe for councils’ IP&R work does not change, this is a priority task that cannot be pushed entirely aside. All of these ‘unprecedented’ events that have shaped 2020 so far will also shape the planning we do with our communities. Let’s band together to support each other to meet these challenges and come out the other side with resilient, optimistic, well-prepared communities ready to face the future.