MONTHLY MYTH: NO CONSEQUENCES FOR CUTTING ASSET PLAN CORNERS

Thinking there’s plenty of time left to engage around your council’s asset plan? It might be tighter than you think.

Our recommendation is that councils start preparing internally now, getting their ‘ducks in a row’ and readying themselves to start engagement process design in early 2024.

Asset planning is complex; and meeting the requirements set out in the Local Government Act 2020 requires meaningful engagement that incorporates deliberation. Deliberative processes can be scaled; however, even a minimal attempt requires time and resources.

If you leave it too late, rush the process or look to quickly ‘tick some engagement boxes’, you’ll miss a golden opportunity to partner with your community around a tangible issue that affects their everyday lives.

It also opens you up to risk. It can be tempting to go for ‘short-term gain’ (that is, cutting corners now), particularly if you are finding it difficult to secure resources and internal buy-in. However, short term gain can end in long-term pain.

THE CONSEQUENCES OF CUTTING CORNERS

Below are some possible risks that are particularly relevant to council asset planning.

POOR OUTPUTS THAT ARE DIFFICULT FOR COUNCIL TO USE

Your community needs adequate time and support to:

understand asset use and management
consider how the plan can align with and help to achieve the Community Vision and supporting Council Plan objectives
weigh up complex factors such as costs, service levels, technology and climate change
grapple with the consequences associated with choices and options
consider the trade-offs associated with decision-making around assets into the future.

This means that the ‘learning piece’ of your engagement process is key. This includes carefully preparing information that is accessible, balanced, transparent and clear.

Participants require facilitated conversations that allow plenty of time to dive deeper into the topic, consider different perspectives and come to agreement.

If you don’t do this, you’re likely to end up with localised thinking and individual wish lists. People won’t consider the whole council area or the differing needs of others.

CONFLICT, EMOTION AND OUTRAGE

It pays to remember that assets are often something your community members use, see and care about. Changes to assets impact people’s lives directly.

If your engagement process is inadequate, you could create (or exacerbate any existing) conflict, emotion and outrage.

When council releases the plan and starts to make decisions around assets, people could be upset that their wish lists weren’t implemented.

LACK OF DECISION-MAKING CONFIDENCE

Your council needs an asset plan that they can stand behind. Asset plans inform the community about how decisions will be made about important assets going forward. Often, the decisions require some rationalisation when budgets are tight or choices need to be made.

Processes that lack depth ultimately make it harder for councils to confidently develop a plan that they feel represents the broader community or will be supported more widely.

GRAB THE GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY!

This is a positive opportunity to engage well around a classic, concrete issue that people can see, experience and touch. It’s a great conversation to have with your community and one that is more likely to attract high participation rates than discussions about less tangible topics like visions.

Give your participants a good amount of balanced information and a supported process that allows them to have meaningful conversations, and you can help them build a rich picture of what is and isn’t working.

This means their thinking will lift above their own little patch, leading to useful outputs for the whole council area, and ones that participants themselves have agreed on.

SO, HOW BIG DO YOU GO?

Deliberation can be scaled - something we’ve explored in our free e-book: A short guide to deliberation for Victorian Councils.

Ultimately, the more you scale up, the more likely you will end up with an asset plan that your council can be confident in. One that represents, on balance, the broader needs and interests of the whole community.

There are some other factors to consider when determining what level of engagement to invest in for your asset plan.

BUDGET

Some councils are grappling with a budget deficit. This means difficult choices will need to be made and, if people aren’t given time to grapple with this, it can lead to outrage and mistrust.

If this is the case, your community is going to need time to understand budget constraints and weigh up what’s most important.

THE SCALE OF ASSETS BEING CONSIDERED

Some smaller councils have fewer assets, so the conversation is more focused. If this is combined with an adequate budget, you may be able consider slightly scaled-down engagement.

EXISTING RELATIONSHIPS AND CONFLICT POTENTIAL

If your council has a challenging relationship with its community (or cohorts within it), you’ll need to scale up your process and allow time for working through mistrust and historical issues.

Dash ahead and forget this step, and you might exacerbate old problems and create hurdles, not just for your asset planning process, but for other council activities as well.

TIMING IT RIGHT

Councils must develop or review Asset Plans in accordance with deliberative practices and adopt them by October 2025.

We know this sounds like forever away! However, to meet the deadline, planning for your engagement process needs to be underway by April 2024 (this includes getting those internal ducks lined up, sub-contractors engaged and your team rallied together).

If you’re hoping to engage after council elections in October 2024, we advise doing as much work as possible beforehand. At a minimum, planning and designing the process and delivering the wider engagement process could occur (then deep-dive deliberative phases can happen after the new councillors are on board).

START EARLY TO ALLOW FOR A ROBUST PROCESS (AND SAVE TIME IN THE END)

Additionally, investing in a robust deliberation offers participants the opportunity to weigh up ideas and come to agreement. This means that the council doesn’t waste time after the process ends trying to make sense of, interpret and evaluate people’s ideas.

LEAVE ENOUGH TIME TO DEVELOP YOUR PLAN

If you don’t start engaging early enough, you won’t leave enough time to develop the plan on the other end.

Consider the time and internal steps required to work with decision-makers to incorporate community recommendations, align the plan with other strategic documents and move through approval processes.

REMEMBER THAT CONTRACTORS NEED LONG LEAD TIMES

Keep in mind that if you want to engage facilitators specialising in deliberative processes, their time is likely booked up at least three to six months in advance. Given that every council is working to the same timeline, we’re expecting that specialists in this space are going to be in demand.

ASSET PLANNING CASE STUDY

In 2022, Glen Eira City Council worked with MosaicLab to deliver an engagement process to gather community feedback about its assets.

The process included a survey and the creation of a citizens’ panel, one of the first we hosted fully face-to-face following the pandemic.

Participants enjoyed not only being ‘back in the room’ but also the strong sense of achievement at the end of the process as they saw their recommendations reflected in the final Asset Plan adopted by the council. 