Byron Shire Council has voted to beef up its community consultation process for large projects including significant policy changes.
Under a motion passed at the last Council meeting for 2025, every major project, or other matter that would normally go out for public exhibition, must now be accompanied by its own detailed ‘community consultation plan’.
These consultation plans will set out the methods, timeframes, target audiences and accessibility measures to be used for community engagement on the given project or issue. This is designed to ensure that consultation with the community on significant projects and issues is undertaken in a clear and consistent manner.
Greens Councillor Elia Hauge, who moved the motion, told Council that it had been failing to consistently act in alignment with its own community engagement principles, including its commitment to be open, transparent and accountable.
Cr Hauge said this was illustrated by a number of recent matters, including the lack of meaningful engagement with young people in relation to Council’s playground policy, and the lack of effective consultation regarding the proposed development of the former Mullumbimby Hospital site.
‘These examples demonstrate a gap between Council’s engagement principles and their practical implementation,’ Cr Hauge said.
‘Councillors require sufficient information about planned engagement approaches to assess whether proposed consultation methods are appropriate to the scale and significance of the decisions being made.
‘This is particularly important for matters affecting community access to democratic processes, youth participation, or other groups who face barriers to engagement. Transparent engagement planning strengthens decision-making by allowing councillors to identify potential gaps in consultation approaches before documents go on exhibition,’ she said.
‘It also builds community confidence by demonstrating that Council takes its engagement commitments seriously and plans appropriately for different consultation contexts.’
Councillors Lyon,Dods against
But independent councillors Michael Lyon and Jack Dods spoke and voted against the move. ‘I really take issue with this idea that we don’t consult or that we don’t consult well,’ Cr Lyon said.
‘It’s all predicated on this premise that we don’t do our job in this way and I actually think we do a really good job.
‘I think we do a great job, and sometimes we need to make a call which the community won’t agree with, or sections of the community won’t agree with, and that’s our role,’ he said.
‘We’re not a direct democracy and thank God we’re not, because a lot of the time the decision needs to be different to what the majority wants.’
Council staff were also opposed to the change.
In written comments accompanying Cr Hauge’s motion, Council’s General Manager Mark Arnold said it was ‘not operationally feasible to include draft Communications and Engagement Plans in agenda reports’.
‘As detailed in our Community Engagement Strategy, the engagement process considers a range of factors including who the project will impact, how much impact the project will have and how interested the community might be,’ Mr Arnold said.
‘These plans are operational documents that evolve throughout a project lifecycle, and often require adjustment based on Council decisions, statutory requirements, and project milestones.
‘Developing these plans prematurely can lead to significant rework, duplication of effort, and increased costs, which is not sustainable given current staff capacity and budget constraints.’
But these concerns ultimately fell on deaf ears. Councillors passed the new consultation measure by a vote of seven councillors to two.
Read more at www.byron.nsw.gov.au.
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