1. Based on the principle that people have a right to be involved in the decisions that affect their lives.^[1]
2. Giving every resident the opportunity to have a say on local priorities and the future of our community.

[1] International Association for Public Participation (IAP2): Core Value #1.

Council with the opportunity to:

• Help identify and/or respond to community needs and priorities.
• Develop options and/or alternatives for how projects and plans are developed and implemented.
• Build community interest and support collective action.
• Build understanding between Council and community members.
• Enhance the quality of Council’s decision-making and to test thinking.
• Support communities who are already engaging with each other.

Community engagement is a two-way exchange of ideas that gives people a voice and influence.

In contrast, Council communications and education are about sharing information in a single direction.

Community engagement focuses on seeking input from individuals who live, work or visit Frankston City, each sharing their own views and experiences.

Stakeholders, on the other hand, are defined in our Community Engagement Policy as organisations, political bodies, committees or groups with a specific interest in a decision.

Council engages with stakeholders through separate processes, such as formal submissions and targeted discussions, alongside broader community engagement.

Council regularly seeks feedback and responds to complaints from community about how we have delivered a service.

While these are important components of Council’s Customer Service Charter, feedback and complaints are managed separately to community engagement.

Some Council services are governed by legislation — such as the Victorian Planning and Environment Act 1987 — which sets out specific processes, timelines and systems for how the community should provide feedback on proposals and projects.

To meet these legal obligations, Council runs these processes separately from our broader community engagement activities. This means our usual Community Engagement Principles do not apply in these cases.

Council should engage:

• Online for all projects
• In-person for ‘discuss’ (medium) and ‘work together’ (high) level projects
• Using community panels and workshops for ‘work together’ (high) level projects

Council should assess who will be impacted or interested in each project, including if it could:

• Impact more than one neighbourhood or group of residents.
• Impact people differently based on age, socio-economic status, cultural background, disability or whether they identify as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander and/or LGBTIQA+.
• Affect people differently based on gender.
• Attract interest or input from specific groups with relevant knowledge, experience or expertise

Council should:

• Tailor engagement activities to the needs of each project, and level of engagement required.
• Ensure our activities are visible, accessible and inclusive.
• Ensure people have the right information and support to take part in a meaningful way.
• Provide a diverse range of activities with accessible options to help more people participate.

Council should:

• Engage for a minimum of 30 days.
• Engage our community as early as possible, preferably at the earliest design and concept stages.
• Consider the timing of significant social and cultural dates to maximise participation. For example:
  • No engagement mid-Dec and end-Jan.
  • Extend timelines if engaging over other periods of lower availability (such as school holidays).
• Be sensitive to current social issues, trends and significant matters.
• Comply with other timing and statutory requirements.

• Maintaining engagement toolkit: Ensuring staff have templates, guidance and materials to plan, deliver, report and review each project.
• Plan: Ensuring adequate time and resources to plan engagement projects.
• Deliver: Ensuring adequate resources to deliver methods in a visible, inclusive way with intended level of influence.
• Report: Ensuring engagement results, outcomes, updates and next steps are communicated in a timely and transparent way.
• Review: Ensuring evaluation and continuously improved.

• Uphold Community Engagement Principles: Ensuring community engagement complies with the Principles.
• Informed Decision-Making: Considering engagement outcomes in good faith and using them to guide Council decisions as much as possible
• Communicating outcomes: Clearly explaining reasons behind Council decisions and how community input was used.
• Awareness Raising: Encouraging community engagement participation.
• Leadership: Balancing short-term and long-term impacts of decision making.

• Participation: Actively participating, to the best of their ability, in engagement opportunities to ensure a diverse range of views and voices are heard.
• Inclusion: Ensuring the tone and manner of behaviour during engagement is respectful and inclusive.
• Perspective: Staying open-minded and considerate of different views throughout the engagement process.
• Collective: Respecting and understanding that sometimes what we want sits at odds with the wants and needs of others.

• Understand that stakeholder engagement is managed separately to community engagement: Council considers submissions representing the needs of stakeholders separately to the input of the broader community.
• Follow Council’s submission process: Council manages a submission process on its website at frankston.vic.gov.au, where stakeholders can request to speak at public Council meetings. Stakeholders are also invited to make email submissions to project teams listed on Engage Frankston.