Community Participation Plan
What is a community participation plan (CPP)?
Community engagement is a collective term which covers consultation and collaboration between Council and a range of stakeholders. Community consultation aims to empower stakeholders (the community) by enabling them to participate in decisions and processes which impact them. The concept of community engagement is often thought of as being on a spectrum from low level engagement or consultation to high level engagement or empowerment.
The Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979 (the Act) recognises the importance of community engagement in the successful implementation of a planning decisions and the value that community engagement can offer decision makers and the decision making process. To formalise this, the Act mandates that Council, as a planning authority, is to prepare and adopt a community participation plan (the CPP) which details the mandatory provisions for notification in accordance with Part 1 Schedule 1 of the Act as well as any local provisions.
The CPP is a plain English document which seeks to encourage effective and on-going partnerships with the community to provide meaningful opportunities for community participation in planning by giving the community every opportunity to participate in strategic planning, have a say on major development which they may be affected by and ensure that there is transparency in decision making processes.
