What is becoming an almost constant refrain from various councillors over the past year or so is the expressed disappointment at the lack of resident responses to the numerous community consultation projects. We agree that for some projects feedback has been underwhelming. One could therefore argue that Glen Eira residents are generally apathetic, disinterested, or as has been the case in the past from certain councillors, the majority are ‘satisfied’ and quite happy with council and their plans. None of these conclusions are warranted in our view.

Glen Eira residents have literally been inundated with consultation after consultation. We have been swamped! In the last 18 months we believe that there have been at least 24 consultations and we’ve undoubtedly missed many others. Even with this figure of 24, that’s more than 1 a month on average. Some of these are:

Housing strategy

Integrated Water management Plan

Elsternwick Cultural Precinct

Aged Care service

Budget

Toilet Strategy

Mackie Road Reserve Masterplan

Community Engagement Strategy

Assett Management Plan

Caulfield Park Entrances

Placemaking

Packer Park Playground Upgrade

Caulfield Station Structure Plan

Smart City Roadmap

Open Space strategy

Open Space Levy

Built Form Frameworks

Glen Huntly Structure Plan

Multi-deck Car parking

Smoke Free Zones

Road Management Plan

Community Safety Plan

Domestic Animal Management Plan

Climate Emergency

MSS rewrite

Yes, it’s great that ‘consultation’ is occurring. And yes again – not everyone is interested in the same issue so there will invariably be differences in public responses to various consultations. But overall, is it any wonder that feedback has been ‘slow’ given this onslaught?

What has never been done, or certainly not made public, is an analysis and subsequent reporting of how well each consultation actually performed.  All we get are generalised summaries of how many downloads, how many submitters. What we don’t get is a critical overview of ‘success’, ‘problems’, ‘failures’, and what is being done to improve the processes and formats.

Basically each major ‘consultation’ follows the same format:

  1. A ‘face to face’ with officers for Q and A – usually during the day when people work
  2. A survey with dubious questions and statements
  3. Images of planned ‘upgrades/projects’ but without basic information such as projected costs, site coverage, etc.
  4. Changes as a result of feedback and reasons why
  5. The absence of basic ‘discussion papers’ that summarise the pros and cons for most consultations

What needs to happen is the close monitoring of each consultation and analyses done on the following:

  • Were the survey questions open ended? Did they have direct relevance to the proposed policy/strategy? Have the questions been trialled with either a focus group, councillors, or the community consultation committee? What lessons has this analyses provided in order to improve any future surveys? What kind of comments did residents provide and how have they been incorporated into the final decision making? How much emphases has been given to the qualitative as opposed to the simple quantitative counting of individual responses? Which questions were not answered and what might be the reason for this? Was the language used appropriate – ie jargon/motherhood statements or clearly explained? Were respondents provided with the complete data to facilitate a sound understanding of the issue and hence valid responses?
  • How many Q and A questions could not be ‘answered’ by officers? What were these questions? What areas were covered by resident questions? Does the focus on one area reveal that council’s information was not understood, and hence requires further analyses and information provision? What was the general tone of resident questions – were they really questions or comments that revealed agreement or dissent?
  • How can various design images be improved? Do residents need to know cost, open space dimensions, site coverage of proposed buildings, tree removal numbers, prior to proffering any comment?

There are many other points we could make. Suffice to say, that until this council truly believes that ‘consultation’ is more than a tick the box exercise, nothing will change. Perhaps it is also worth considering that the generally poor rate of feedback has got nothing to do with apathy, but perhaps the simple fact that residents do not believe that anything they might say will change council’s proposals. If this is the case, then it is incumbent on council to determine how prevalent this view is. Have residents come to the belief that council has already made up its mind as to what will happen and that ‘consultations’ are nothing more than fulfilling various legal requirements, or merely another public relations exercise where council can claim – we consulted! Until this final question is answered and resolved, progress will be impossible.