Consultation, Participation, Engagement…

The Community’s Strategy

What does it mean to have a Community Strategic Plan (CSP)? The plan is for a Local Government Area (LGA), but how is it from a community?

The intent of Integrated Planning & Reporting (IPR) is that the CSP is for the whole community, with multiple stakeholders responsible for delivering its outcomes. The challenge is then, in terms of process, to differentiate the different roles and responsibilities of stakeholders, and more importantly, get them all working on delivery.

The 4-year Delivery Program is then essentially the council’s own accountability as part of the overall outcomes plan for the elected council’s term of office.

Consultation, Participation, Engagement…

I will offer a few thoughts on what the Community Engagement Strategy in IPR means and I invite those more expert to comment.

All councils carry out extensive community consultation in a vast number of ways. While some councils are impressively resourced and organised for this purpose, more often consultation mechanisms and actions are scattered and poorly coordinated. One benefit of IPR should be the greater emphasis placed on managing and evaluating the major investment councils make in engaging with the community.

There has been no objection from local government to the principle that a documented strategy for community engagement should be part of IPR, but there have been plenty of misgivings about how far engagement is supposed to go and the practicalities for smaller councils. This is understandable, especially when we see government bodies, such as IPART float unrealistic options about how to gauge community views on rates.

As I see it, part of the concern is based on misconceptions that the CSP is supposed to be somehow ‘written’ by the community, or that the Department of Local Government (DLG) is simply endorsing a ‘bigger is better’ view of community consultation.

The Rules of Engagement

Good community engagement is an outcome in itself, because it is indispensable to accountability and transparent decision-making. However, more is not necessarily better. The leading body in this area is the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) and its widely-used Public Participation Spectrum is often assumed to be a progression from ‘basic’ to ‘advanced’ community participation. In fact, it is a tool or guideline “designed to assist with the selection of the level of participation that defines the public’s role in any community engagement program. The Spectrum shows that differing levels of participation are legitimate depending on the goals, time frames, resources and levels of concern in the decision to be made”.

Most importantly, the Spectrum also “sets out the promise being made to the public at each participation level”. Fulfilling such commitments does not come easily and certainly IPR is very much about lifting this bar for NSW local government.

A question of timing

Following the election of each new Council (in NSW, this is fixed for late September every fourth year), there will be only 9 months to review, consult on, and confirm the CSP.  Councils will also have to develop and consult on the Delivery Program and Operational Plan simultaneously, so that they are all in place from 1 July of the following year. This is a huge ask and, apart from other demands, will require a program of community engagement during the summer, which is generally considered a ‘no-go area’ for major consultations.

However, no real alternatives have been proposed, as newly-elected councils need to have their own Delivery Program in place if they are expected to take real ownership of the strategy. I dare to suggest that the practical problem here is the timing of local government elections in NSW, but I can’t pretend that there is a groundswell of support to change the dates.

The Community’s Plan or the Council’s Plan?

The recent practitioners’ forum on IPR identified “the need for council to coordinate the development of the Community Strategic Plan for the local area to achieve a sustainable future. So that, in turn, means that the Community Strategic Plan is not council’s (as such), but rather that council is supported in its role of civic stewardship by other stakeholders”.

Of course, this is saying that the CSP is not just a ‘Council Plan’, but I would want to express it somewhat differently, as I believe the CSP must be very much the council’s plan – or there will be precious few community outcomes.

Councils have a range of fundamental roles in helping to deliver a sustainable future for their LGAs and communities – “as a leader, facilitator, educator and service provider” (Sustainable Penrith Action Plan). The recognition of this is one of the strengths of IPR. We live in a participatory democracy, but not a direct democracy! 

The New Zealand Experience

New Zealand has solved the Community Plan vs Council Plan argument – the model there is called the Long-Term Council Community Plan (LTCCP). Simple!

In crude terms, we in NSW are aware of New Zealand local government being ‘5-10 years ahead of us in this stuff’. At the forum mentioned above, Dave Foster of Manukau City Council gave a frank presentation on NZ’s experience with the LTCCP legislation. Manukau has reached a level of participation which saw its draft 2009 Plan receive a stunning 19,800 submissions (from a population of about 330,000). Dave posed the question “How do you get to the stage where the community is thinking about the things that you need them to think about?” Sounds like guided democracy is still required.

A local delegate countered by asking Dave whether New Zealand was actually a better place to live due to this participatory local government – and how could this be judged anyway? How and what do you measure? More sustainable? Better services?  A great question and one I intend to discuss further in my next post.

Community Engagement as part of the Plan

Another excellent question posed to me recently is how to make the Community Engagement Strategy (CES) part of the Plan itself.

Obviously, at one level, community engagement has to be a strategy as well as a value, and must be an action (hopefully a well-resourced project) to be carried out in the Operational Plan. But can the CES become an intrinsic dimension of the plan and program?

 

In future posts, I would like to pick up on some of these themes, including the definition of community and stakeholders, and lessons from the UK local government ‘revolution’. I invite your active engagement!

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By Ross Kingsley, Senior Consultant Performance Planning, TechnologyOne

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Tags: beyond compliance, community strategic plan, DLG, integrated planning & reporting, New South Wales local government, performance management, performance planning, reforms, software, strategic planning, technology, technologyone, urban sustainability program