Community engagement provides us with an understanding of your views and values, it helps us to make informed decisions and deliver better services for you.
Our community plays a vital role in shaping the future City of Stonnington. We want to encourage participation in engagement opportunities and to help support meaningful conversations. This will help us to reflect your priorities and expectations in decision making.
During 2021 we reviewed and updated our Engagement Policy – to give our community clear expectations on how they can expect us to engage and consult with them. Developing this new policy included extensive community consultation, including:
- Community feedback over a six-month period, mostly involving online conversations (due to COVID restrictions impacting on face-to-face and in-person consultations) and targeted meetings with established advisory groups.
- In November 2020, an online workshop was held to better understand the perspective and experience of the community, discuss enablers and barriers to public participation, and provide feedback on engagement principles.
- Overall, more than 100 people directly participated in shaping the new policy.
The new policy was endorsed by Council in early May 2021, and underwent a six month review in October and November 2021 to make sure that it is continuing to meet our community’s expectations.
During October and November 2021, people completing surveys via our Connect Stonnington platform were invited to provide feedback on our engagement process and their expectations on how the information they provide will be used. We also spoke with our internal teams to make sure that the policy is empowering them to hear from our community when planning and delivering projects, programs and initiatives.
A report was provided to Council during December 2021 recommending minor changes to Council's Engagement Policy. The changes were adopted by Council and the updated policy is now available on our website.
For more information call 8290 1333 to speak to our Coordinator Community Engagement or email connect@stonnington.vic.gov.au
