Community facilities give local residents a place to come together. These venues – neighbourhood centres, youth and senior centres, and community halls, among others – promote everything from physical activity to social cohesion, keeping people connected to their neighbours and active in community life.
In 2020, Shellharbour City Council contracted the UTS Institute for Public Policy and Governance (IPPG) to undertake a community facilities needs study and to develop a 10-year strategy to guide the ongoing management and activation of this crucial local infrastructure.
“This brief is representative of the sort of work we do, and it was an interesting project: in order to give the Council a 10-year strategy, we needed to do extensive research,” says Edwina Deakin, Senior Manager, Advisory Services at IPPG.
Building the evidence base
The IPPG Advisory research team started with a review of 54 community facilities with the Shellharbour Council area, followed by a desktop policy and research review.
Next, they undertook an extensive community and stakeholder engagement process – three different types of community surveys, seven stakeholder workshops, 12 focus groups, plus opportunities for written feedback – to understand the needs and values of local Shellharbour residents and map them against broader trends in community facility planning.
“When we consult with the community, they’re often very specific about what they want, but we also do an overarching scan of all the evidence to ensure the options we’re providing are robust,” Ms Deakin says.
“All this research is outlined in our Needs Study, which is publicly available.”
The Needs Study informed the development the 10-year Community Facilities Strategy, which includes six guiding principles – responsive to community and place; accessible, inclusive and adaptive; nurturing cohesion and creating connections; affordable and equitable; informed by evidence and best practice; sustainable and future oriented – to guide its implementation.
“The principles are sort of the bedrock on which decisions should be made,” Deakin says.
“So, even when you’re implementing a specific strategy or action, you should always be asking yourself: is it inclusive and equitable? Is it responsive to the other principles?”
10-year vision for the future
The Community Facilities Strategy sets out the next 10 years of community facility planning, management, activation and maintenance for Shellharbour City Council.
The Strategy, which includes an action plan, is split into five priority areas and articulates actions to be undertaken, timeframes for activity, and the key principles that each action corresponds to.
“One of the challenges of a 10-year plan is that you have to have something that will stand the test of time,” Deakin says.
“The way we arrived at it was by a top-down and a bottom-up approach that incorporates grassroots perspectives alongside broader Council needs.”
The work was familiar territory: IPPG is a leading public policy research centre, delivering research and consulting services to federal, state and local government clients.
According to Lauren Peters, Senior Community Planning Officer at Shellharbour City Council, the research team’s expertise and collaborative approach has been well received.
“IPPG were extremely professional and knowledgeable,” she says.
“The Needs Study, including the demographic analysis, usage data analysis, community and stakeholder consultation and mapping, was particularly impactful.
“IPPG are now working on an internal implementation plan that will guide Council’s delivery of the actions within the Action Plan and Strategy.”
