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What is Community Planning?
Community planning is all about providing opportunities for people in the Port Phillip community to learn more about local issues, weigh up options to address them, and voice an opinion.
Every ten years, our Community Plan is developed by, and for, the whole Port Phillip community. It is used by the council to guide its priorities and inform planning over the next ten years.
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Connecting with community ideas and opinions
To develop the 2007-2017 Community Plan, the Council facilitated a number of consultation and engagement strategies to ensure that the Plan was developed by and for the people who live, work and play in the City of Port Phillip.
Community Survey and Qualitiative Research
This questionnaire was available online and was distributed in hard copy to all households in the municipality, as well as at town halls, libraries, community centres, cafes and other community venues throughout Port Phillip. More than 2,300 people who live, work and visit Port Phillip responded. You can read the entire  Port Phillip 2006 Community Plan Survey here or you can check out the Executive Summary of the report. Interviews were also held with a random sample of 700 residents and staff from local service agencies. This information informed the identification of core issues and themes for the subsequent Community Summit.
Collaborative Steering Committee
In October 2006, Council established a Community Plan Joint Council Community Steering Committee to oversee the community engagement strategy in the lead up to the Community Summit. Volunteer nominations were sought and five community representatives from a variety of backgrounds were appointed to join two Councillors, the CEO and two Executive Directors. Meeting regularly, the Joint Steering Committee had an important role guiding the process.
Port Phillip Speaks Community Summit
On Saturday 28 April 2007, the City of Port Phillip hosted Port Phillip Speaks Community Summit. The aim was to develop a community-owned vision for the next ten years and priorities that would inform the 2007-2017 City of Port Phillip Community Plan. Using groupware computing systems, individual key pad polling and audio-visual communication tools, 750 people came together to discuss, debate and determine the priorities that were important to our community. These priorities have informed our Community Plan.
Participants came from all walks of life and represented the diversity of the Port Phillip community. People were randomly allocated to tables to achieve a variety of viewpoints in each group. Trained and non-partisan facilitators helped groups explore ideas and differences of opinion, and topic experts were on hand to answer questions. Responses from each small group were transmitted to a central 'theme team' who then collated responses to identify themes. All of the participant responses are available in a searchable database. Individual keypad polling was used to establish collective priorities across all participants.
Over the course of the day, the summit produced:
- a revised and updated community vision statement;
- a list of priorities for action on the five core topics of parking; community building; urban planning and development; entertainment precincts and residential amenity, and public open spaces;
- climate change was incorporated as an overarching issue across all topics and was reflected in the priorities for action;
- neighbourhood-based networking and discussion of how to increase neighbourhood social connections;
- a Summit Preliminary Report distributed to participants at the end of the day;
- Council commitment to financial and practical support to see initiatives implemented; and
- seven follow-up neighbourhood meetings held within 3 weeks of the summit.
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Turning the outcomes of the Community Summit into a Community Plan
The Summit highlighted that people wanted less 'motherhood statements' of good intent and were calling for a stronger emphasis on accountability for implementation and outcomes. This led to a framework of four separate but connected parts - each with its own specific annual action plan to document deliverables and monitor outcomes. The four action plans are reviewed annually and are therefore loose leaf attachments to the Community Plan. For regular updates on our Community Plan sign up to our e-newsletter.
For more information about our Community Plan contact the Community Governance team or phone ASSIST on (03) 9209 6777 or TTy (03) 9209 6713.
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