In this guide
Step checklist
- Identify stages of engagement and engagement activities
- Determine your capacity to deliver the engagement
- Determine how to evaluate the success of the engagement
- Prepare your engagement plan
- Get approval from the State Planning Commission, if required
How to complete this step
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Identify stages of engagement and engagement activities
Determine the stages of engagement required for your proposal and the approach to each stage (activities, resourcing and timing).
When developing your engagement approach remember to:
- be clear about your stakeholders' scope of influence in relation to the decision being made
- ensure that the engagement techniques used match the scope of influence.
Why this is important
The Charter encourages engagement at an early stage, and then a scaled back consultation when dealing with a settled or advanced policy.
Your engagement is likely to happen in multiple stages, early in the proposal's development and later when the draft proposal is prepared.
For each stage, the stakeholders and level of engagement may change.
For example, you may involve or collaborate with residents in the development of a draft proposal in Stage1 and consult again on the draft proposal at Stage 2. The wider community may only be consulted as part of Stage 2.
How to do it
The Charter provides for flexibility in the delivery of an engagement. The important thing is to ensure that the Charter principles and any statutory obligations are adhered to in your approach.
When determining the stages of engagement, consider that:
- engagement will happen over multiple stages
- the aim of each stage of engagement may differ, for example:
- early input in development of a proposal
- feedback on a draft proposal
- level of engagement for each stage may vary
- timeframes for each stage may influence your approach.
When deciding on engagement activities, you need to consider a range of elements, including:
- Charter principles you will need to put into practice for each engagement activity, see Charter principles in action (PDF, 442 KB).
- characteristics of your stakeholders will determine the types of venues, timing and communication.
You can tailor your engagement methods based on your stakeholder analysis, completed as part of Step 1. - level of engagement required. If you are only informing your stakeholders of a change, then a public press advertisement or letter may be suitable. However, if you are consulting your stakeholders on a change, you may invite written submissions or hold a community event.
- Your stakeholders' scope of influence on the outcome of the proposal.
Choose activities that gather the level of information needed to develop the proposal and set the right level of community expectation. For example:- a workshop for people to contribute diverse ideas where there is a lot of room to move in a proposal
- where there is less room to move, you may seek feedback on particular options only.
- Educational materials to provide supporting information to the community to build their understanding so they can provide informed feedback. Use plain English and consider visual tools or scenarios to demonstrate development outcomes.
- Methods to provide stakeholders with the results of the engagement and how it will be, or has been, used in development of the proposal.
- Any mandatory requirements for engagement.
Tools
- Planning instruments and examples of level of engagement (PDF, 229 KB)
- Charter principles in action (PDF, 442 KB)
- Types of engagement activities at different levels (PDF, 114 KB)
Mandatory requirements for engagement
The Planning Development and Infrastructure Act 2016 identifies a number of mandatory requirements for engagement in relation to the preparation and amendment of planning policies, strategies and schemes which must be reflected in engagement plans established under the Charter.
Consultation category
Mandatory requirement
Proposals that are specific to a particular council or councils (where a council did not initiate the proposal)
Council(s) must be directly notified of the proposal and consulted
Proposals that are generally relevant to councils
The Local Government Association must be notified in writing and consulted
A proposal to enter a site within the Planning and Design Code as a place of local heritage value
The owner of the land on which the site is situated must be directly notified in writing of the proposal and consulted for a minimum of four weeks
A proposal to amend the Planning and Design Code to include any heritage character or preservation policy that is similar in intent or effect to a local heritage listing
The owner of the land on which the place is situated, must be directly notified in writing of the proposal and consulted for a minimum of four weeks
Infrastructure delivery scheme
Land-owners affected by the scheme must be directly notified in writing
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Determine your capacity to deliver the engagement
Consider your organisation's capacity to deliver the engagement plan that has been prepared.
Why this is important
It is important to ensure that you have the resources to implement your engagement plan (e.g. people, skills, finances, materials, venues).
Expensive engagement doesn't necessarily mean good engagement. What is important is that there is adequate opportunity for people to provide input and that they have access to the information they need to provide informed feedback.
How to do it
Reflecting on your organisation's readiness to deliver an engagement will help identify areas that need more support or resourcing; the good engagement work that is already happening; and whether you need to amend your plan accordingly.
Similarly, as the engagement plan is implemented, it may be subject to change as new issues or ideas emerge.
Key questions to ask include:
- What resources do we have available to implement this engagement plan (both financial and staffing)?
- Do we have the internal capacity to deliver this engagement process (i.e. the skills and expertise)?
- How else might we resource this engagement plan?
- How do we build our internal capacity to deliver this (or any future) engagement plan?
- Do we need to adjust the engagement plan to match our available capacity?
- Are there any opportunities to collaborate and share the responsibilities for engagement?
Tools
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Determine how to evaluate the success of the engagement
Include the Commission's minimum evaluation criteria and identify any other measures of engagement success.
Why this is important
When planning your engagement, decide how you can measure the success of your engagement so it can be adequately assessed to show that you have met the principles of the Charter.
Evaluation data will need to be included in your report when you submit your initial or amended planning instrument to the Minister for Planning for a final decision.
The State Planning Commission is responsible for ensuring that all relevant engagements have met the requirements of the Community Engagement Charter and that the Charter itself is reviewed at least once every five years.
How to do it
There are minimum performance indicators for evaluating an engagement against the Charter's principles and for reviewing the Charter's performance.
The performance indicators must be listed in the Engagement Plan. See the measuring success tool (PDF, 379 KB).
Consider what can be learned about the process, to identify key questions in the evaluation approach. Additional measures of success show what successful engagement would look like for:
- the project team
- the decision-maker
- the community and stakeholders.
Outline how you will measure a successful engagement. Your measures will probably include a mixture of:
- quantitative, such as:
- number of submissions
- website hits
- number of workshop participants
- qualitative, such as descriptions of:
- activities undertaken
- how feedback influenced the policy, strategy or scheme.
Depending on the scale or significance of the proposal you may consider using apps or web tools to capture and analyse feedback or engagement outcomes.
Your measures should focus on the success of the engagement process itself and ask:
- did people who wanted to have input actually do that?
- did the collective input add value to the final policy, strategy or scheme?
Good engagement powers good planning outcomes. Measuring planning outcomes is an important longer term process, but not the focus of this guide.
If further evaluation measures are proposed these should be added to the engagement plan and the final evaluation provided in the engagement report.
Check against the Charter principles in action (PDF, 442 KB) and assess how well your engagement plan addresses them, to ensure you are meeting the requirements of the Community Engagement Charter.
Make any adjustments to ensure the principles are adequately represented, along with all statutory requirements.
Tools
Considerations in measuring performance
Principles Performance outcomes Examples of types of measures Engagement is genuine
People had faith and confidence in the engagement process
- Was there opportunity for different knowledge and perspectives to be shared?
- How well did the engagement process enable stakeholder and community issues and solutions to be identified?
- How did people interact with each other?
- Did the process build community capacity about planning?
- Would people participate in a similar process in the future?
Engagement is inclusive and respectful
Affected and interested people had the opportunity to participate and be heard.
- Did everyone who is impacted and/or interested have an opportunity to participate? Was there an opportunity for different knowledge and perspectives to be shared?
Engagement is fit-for-purpose
People were effectively engaged and satisfied with the process. People were clear about how the proposed changes and how may affect them.
- Did people feel the process enabled appropriate input? Did people understand how to participate in the engagement? Did people understand what was being proposed?
Engagement is informed and transparent
All relevant information was made available and people could access it easily. People understood how their views were considered , the reasons for the outcomes and final decision.
- Did people have access to the information they needed? How was participant input considered in the final decision? How did it add value? Does reporting adequately capture the spectrum of participant views?
Engagement is reviewed and improved
The engagement was reviewed and improvements recommended
- Were learnings about the process documented?
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Prepare your engagement plan
Prepare an engagement plan for your project which includes the information gathered as part of Steps 1 and 2.
How well your engagement plan addresses the principles will be a major consideration of the Minister and the State Planning Commission in approving your engagement plan.
Why this is important
The engagement plan is a document that sets out the steps for engagement.
A requirement of Practice Direction 2 - Consultation on the Preparation or Amendment of a Designated Instrument is that an entity preparing or amending a designated instrument must prepare an engagement plan.
The engagement plan must be submitted to the State Planning Commission for approval.
The State Planning Commission will check that the proposed engagement meets the principles of the Charter. The intent to meet the principles of the Charter is demonstrated through completing the Steps 1 and 2 in this Toolkit.
How to do it
Prepare your engagement plan using the information gathered through Steps 1 and 2.
While a template is provided with this Toolkit, the Charter does not prescribe a particular template for the plan. You may use your organisation's engagement plan template, another template or the Better Together template available from the Better Together website along with other proven engagement tools.
The most important thing for your engagement plan to capture is the information outlined in the steps of this Toolkit.
Tools
Example
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Get approval from the State Planning Commission, if required
Submit your engagement plan to the State Planning Commission for approval, if required.
Why this is important
Before you start engagement on a State Planning Policy, Region Plan or Infrastructure Scheme you must submit your engagement plan to the State Planning Commission (the Commission) for approval.
Before it goes to the Commission, staff from the department will assess your engagement plan and may seek amendments or clarifications before forwarding it on to the Commission with advice.
How to do it
It is recommended that the engagement plan be submitted to the State Planning Commission with initiation documentation.
It is recognised that there may not be enough information to determine the details of the engagement plan at this early stage, so the engagement plan can be lodged after the initiation.
