Celebrating a year of significant community engagement

Published on 03 February 2022

Council launched its new community engagement platform, Participate Hepburn, a year ago when it embarked on the development of a new Community Engagement Policy and the Council Plan 2021 – 2024. The platform has since been used to capture feedback on projects of all sizes.

Mayor, Tim Drylie, said that the Participate Hepburn platform has been hugely successful in gathering community feedback on both big and small projects.

“The platform is a very successful community engagement tool. It complements our other engagement techniques like face-to-face pop-up sessions, SMS text and more traditional email and mail-outs,” said Cr Drylie.

"Thank you to everyone who has provided feedback to Council to inform our decision making, and we understand there is still room for improvement in the way we go about engaging with our community," he said.

"There are many projects currently open for input, such as Sustainable Hepburn, Positive Ageing, and Western Victorian Transmission Network Project. I encourage you to regularly visit the site and have your say."

Participate Hepburn contains more than 50 different engagements/projects and has attracted 31,385 views, 15,334 unique visitors and over 3,300 pieces of feedback during the last year. Participate Hepburn is complimented by our monthly e-newsletter, Hepburn Life. Hepburn Life was launched in April 2022 and is regularly sent to over 3400 subscribers.

You can sign up to receive Hepburn Life at https://mailchi.mp/hepburn/sign-up

Both Participate Hepburn and Hepburn Life builds on Council’s commitment to improve our community engagement and we are committed to reviewing and refining our approach going forward. Visit Participate Hepburn at https://participate.hepburn.vic.gov.au.