2025
COMMUNITY & INTEGRATED PLANNING AWARD
COMMUNITY & INTEGRATED PLANNING
2025 AWARD
ABOUT THIS AWARD
The Community and Integrated Planning Award celebrates the success of individuals and teams working in Victorian Local Government’s integrated planning space.
The Community and Integrated Planning Award focuses on local government initiatives that demonstrate excellence in the areas of:
• Council planning
• Community planning – empowering community
• Integrating Council and community planning
• Performance measurement and management
• Service planning, transformation or enhancement
• Sustainable community involvement in Council and community visioning
• Planning for environmental sustainability, accessibility, gender equality
• Planning for business transformation
• Transparent reporting
COMMUNITY & INTEGRATED PLANNING AWARD 2025
Kingston City Council
Talking Kingston
Kingston City Council has redefined community engagement in budget planning through its innovative platform, Talking Kingston. Unlike traditional models where feedback is sought once annually, Kingston now invites ideas 365 days a year, empowering residents and businesses to shape decisions from the outset. This shift has transformed the budget process from reactive to proactive, with 724 submissions already influencing the 2025–26 Budget—up from 459 last year and a mere 20–40 annually before the platform’s launch. The result is Kingston’s most collaborative budget to date, reflecting a genuine commitment to participatory governance.
Talking Kingston is deeply embedded in Council’s strategic planning and budgeting processes, ensuring community input informs decisions throughout the year. The platform supports the Council Plan’s priority to broaden participation and has become a vital tool for departments to gather real-time insights. These insights guide service planning, infrastructure development, and resource allocation. Promotion through newsletters, social media, and community events has driven diverse participation, while the platform’s accessible design - featuring plain-language content and user-friendly tools - ensures inclusivity across all demographics.
A standout feature of Talking Kingston is its multistage engagement model. Residents can contribute ideas, participate in interactive discussions, and track how their input shapes Council actions. This feedback loop fosters transparency and trust, transforming the platform into a two-way conversation rather than a one-off consultation. Internally, the initiative has fostered cross-department collaboration, with insights shared across teams to support coordinated, communityinformed planning. The data-driven approach ensures Council remains responsive to evolving community priorities.
Since its launch, participation has surged by over 3,000 per cent, and community satisfaction has followed suit. Every submission receives a personalised response from the relevant department, reinforcing the value of each voice. Talking Kingston exemplifies how digital innovation, inclusivity, and transparency can elevate local government engagement, setting a new benchmark for collaborative budgeting in Victoria.
COMMUNITY & INTEGRATED PLANNING AWARD 2025
Yarra City Council
Deliberative Community Integrated Service Planning and Review
In 2024, Yarra City Council placed community voice at the centre of its service planning through a pioneering deliberative engagement process. Forty-two residents were selected to co-develop Yarra’s first-ever Service Planning and Review Principles, shaping how services should be planned in the context of financial sustainability. These principles were embedded into an organisation-wide Accelerated Service Planning program, where managers and coordinators identified 481 improvement actions over three years. With approximately $12.7 million in potential productivity gains, the initiative has already delivered tangible outcomes, demonstrating the power of community-led decision-making.
Historically, Yarra’s service reviews were conducted inconsistently and lacked a unifying framework. In response, Council adopted a Financial Sustainability Strategy in 2023, which called for a more structured and inclusive approach. The newly formed Business Transformation branch led the development of a holistic Service Management and Planning program, integrating community input from the outset. A representative Community Working Group was engaged to co-create 16 Service Planning and Review Principles and eight Service Review Triggers, ensuring that future planning aligned with community values and financial realities.
The initiative’s strength lay in its integration of two major projects - Deliberative Engagement and Accelerated Service Planning - into a single, cohesive framework. A staged approach allowed for the development of a Service Catalogue, benchmarking against peer councils, and the prioritisation of improvement actions. A deliberate pause between stages ensured that community-developed principles were embedded before further planning. Cross-functional collaboration was facilitated through digital tools and regular touchpoints, enabling transparency, shared learning, and coordinated action across departments.
This integrated approach has redefined how Yarra plans and delivers services. By aligning internal processes with community expectations, the initiative has strengthened trust, transparency, and organisational ownership. It exemplifies how local government can embed community voice into core operations, delivering measurable improvements while advancing the principles of democracy, governance, and financial sustainability.
COMMUNITY & INTEGRATED PLANNING AWARD
Banyule City Council Banyule Futures
Banyule Futures marked a transformative shift in how Banyule City Council integrates data and community voice into strategic planning. By adopting a placebased approach across seven precincts, the initiative made information local and relevant, generating over 970 community responses and engaging 70 staff in shaping the future of Banyule. The project checked in on the Banyule Community Vision 2041 and informed the development of the new Council Plan and Health and Wellbeing Plan. A representative community group of 55 residents co-developed 34 priorities and nine guiding principles, ensuring that future planning reflects the aspirations of a diverse community.
The initiative aligned closely with Council’s goals of transparency, inclusion, and evidence-based decisionmaking. Targeted outreach ensured participation from LGBTIQA+ communities, First Nations people, young people, and those living with disability. Staff capability was strengthened through training and co-delivery of workshops and pop-ups, embedding community insights into Council’s operations.
Pre- and post-engagement surveys showed increased trust, understanding, and connection among those involved. By combining digital and face-to-face engagement, Banyule Futures delivered detailed, place-specific insights that are now shaping Council’s strategic direction. The project stands as a model for inclusive, data-informed planning that builds trust and strengthens the relationship between Council and community.
