At the Council Meeting last night, Council adopted a set of principles to guide service planning and review putting community at the heart of decision making.

The 16 Service Planning and Review Principles adopted at last night’s Council Meeting are vital as Yarra’s rapidly growing community evolves and Council plans for the future.

Yarra City Council Mayor, Edward Crossland said, “On behalf of my fellow Councillors we are excited to move forward with a set of service principles that put community values at the heart of our decision-making process.”

“These principles will be vital to ensuring all services are relevant, financially sustainable and can meet future community needs.”

“Whether you answered a survey online, participated in an interview over the phone, spoke to us in person or were a member of our community working group, your ideas and insights have helped shape our service offering for years to come.”

The adopted Service Planning and Review Principles are listed below.

When planning and reviewing services, Council will:

1. Actively include a range of First Nations’ voices and values in all decision making and placemaking to ensure ongoing community resilience.
2. Be proactive in supporting communities and service providers to dramatically reduce waste and greenhouse emissions and prioritise regenerative systems to improve wellbeing and biodiversity and sustainable outcomes.
3. Ensure Yarra’s artistic and cultural identity is valued and supported given their contribution to community resilience.
4. Select service providers that are in line with Council’s sustainability policies and goals.
5. Be adaptable and proactive by identifying, planning for, and implementing solutions that respond to dynamic factors and the current and future community needs.
6. Deliver qualitative and quantitative evidence-based outcomes that include community input, which will be shared and communicated in an accessible way with the community.
7. Use a comparative benefit analysis to measure value for money and the positive impact of service reform for the community.
8. Actively engage the community, prioritising those most directly impacted and in line with Council’s Community Engagement Policy, where appropriate.
9. Prioritise financial sustainability and appropriate resource allocation to enable us to respond to changing community needs, now and into the future.
10. Prioritise service delivery models where it can maintain control of quality and influence the community benefits and outcomes.
11. Prioritise social benefits, especially those that address the needs of vulnerable and diverse people, within financial means.
12. Seek creative and innovative ways to continually improve and address challenges, including collaborating and partnering with other councils, other levels of government, not-for-profits, businesses, and volunteers.
13. Ensure social impact and equity are accounted for when pricing a user-pays, market-comparable service.
14. When making decisions, be considerate and evaluate the impact a change to one service will have on all other services.
15. When considering a change to service that is also provided by an external market, evaluate the external market against Council’s Social Justice Charter principles, of Access, Equity, Rights and Participation.
16. Assess and consider the accessibility of services within a user’s ability and means, both geographically and digitally, when proposing changes to service locations.

These principles were created after a deliberative engagement process. The general community was invited to provide feedback on Council's services in November last year to help us understand community sentiment on Yarra’s services.

Council also conducted social research from a representative sample of the community to establish baseline sentiment This approach ensured that missing voices from the community were captured, including young people, culturally and linguistically diverse communities, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and community members who are renting.

Information and insights from the earlier stages of engagement helped inform the deliberative engagement. 44 participants were selected as part of a thorough and independent selection process to ensure the diversity of the Yarra community was represented.

In a series of 4 workshops, led by independent community engagement specialists from Capire Consulting, the community working group members developed the draft set of service planning and review principles, which have now in their final form been endorsed by Council. You can learn more about the consultation process using this link.