Purpose of the guide
Community engagement practitioners engaging on behalf of the NSW Government are required to comply with the Regional Communities (Consultation Standards) Act 2024 (Section 50).
This purpose of this guide is to make this process easier, by incorporating internationally recognised best practice into NSW Government consultation with regional, rural and remote communities that face unique public participation challenges.
Regional community consultation vision
The vision consists of the following outcomes:
Community
- There is improved engagement and stronger, respectful relationships with regional, rural and remote communities.
- People and communities can help inform and influence decisions that impact them.
- They know that their views have been listened to by the NSW Government.
Sector
- The public sector engages effectively with communities across regional, rural and remote NSW.
- The workforce has the skills, resources and competencies to undertake effective engagement and uses community feedback to inform decision-making.
Five principles for engaging with regional, rural and remote communities
These principles will help guide community consultation with regional, rural and remote communities. They have been developed in consultation with engagement specialists and community representatives.
1
Meaningful
- Consultation activities have a clearly defined purpose and objectives that are shared with the public.
- The process is focused on achieving an outcome, but not one that is predetermined.
- Participants are provided with adequate time, background information and opportunities to participate in a meaningful way.
- Consultation activities and processes make it as easy as possible for community to participate and provide input.
- Genuinely listening to the community as part of the consultation, ensuring a diverse range of voices are heard.
2
Transparent
- Promoting the opportunity to take part in the consultation across a variety of digital and non-digital communications channels, with sufficient notice (ideally 4 weeks).
- Recognising and communicating the needs and interests of all participants, including decision-makers.
- Honesty about the level of influence the public has in the decision-making process. Explaining why some decisions can be influenced by the consultation, while others cannot.
- Early and ongoing communication with stakeholders, including timely progress updates at various stages of the consultation process and project timeline.
- Advising participants, where suitable, on how their consolidated feedback affected, or did not affect, the decision at the end of a consultation (ideally within 3 months).
3
Localised
- Partnering with local community leaders (including local government/Joint Organisations and Aboriginal Land Councils) to identify relevant stakeholder groups (including hard-to-reach cohorts), as well as strategies for engaging with them.
- Recognising every community is different (from large regional centres to small remote villages and discreet Aboriginal communities), understanding community characteristics and taking a place-based approach.
- Tailoring the communications and community consultation approach to specific community needs in terms of timing, location, language and style.
- Leveraging trusted local sources of information to raise awareness of consultation opportunities via existing networks and communications channels.
- Appreciating that people’s time is limited, and making consultation as easy and streamlined as possible – this may include piggybacking off existing community events/engagement activities to help reduce consultation fatigue.
4
Inclusive
- Consultation design that enables the full participation of all who wish to be involved.
- Identifying and overcoming any barriers to participation, including, where reasonable, asking individuals or groups how they would like to participate and designing the process accordingly.
- Considering local historical, social and cultural context. Seeking local advice about appropriate consultation timings, locations and culturally aware/safe engagement.
- Providing the community with accurate and easy-to-understand information. Technical information is communicated for the layperson. Translations, interpreters, accessible formats and audio-visual aids are considered.
- Seeking diverse opinions to build a greater understanding of the broad range of community views and values.
5
Flexible
- Adapting engagement plans and the timing of consultation activities to meet the needs of community members (for example, farmers during harvest season, or working parents).
- Reviewing consultation at the end of each stage to identify opportunities to improve practice and increase participation.
- Including mechanisms for input from individual, organisational or marginalised voices that may not have been identified in the initial stakeholder analysis/engagement activities.
- Ensuring consultation is fit-for-purpose and suitably adaptable to respond to changing dynamics among stakeholder groups (for example, it may not be appropriate to consult on a non–recovery related project too soon after a natural disaster).
- Building extra time and resources into the planning so consultation can be responsive to changing needs of the community (for example, Sorry Business in Aboriginal communities).
Quality Assurance Framework checklist and standards
The guide includes a self-assessment checklist to help practitioners monitor whether they are adhering to the standards.
The standards have been defined to assist the NSW Government to develop engagement processes that are tailored to each relevant consultation and community need.
They include:
- purpose definition
- level of participation
- stakeholder analysis
- accessibility and inclusivity
- planning and approval
- implementation
- evaluation
- closing the loop.
Download the Regional Communities Consultation Guide
When you download the guide you will find:
- examples of appropriate engagement methods and communications channels
- frequently asked questions
- links to sources of support and advice for both practitioners and the community.
Download the Regional Communities Consultation Guide (PDF 559.02KB)