Organisations should be applauded for their willingness to embrace new ways of reaching out to and engaging with their communities. Invercargill City Council has recently decided that there is value in going to where its communities are, rather than making those communities come to them, with two initiatives.

One of these involves physically connecting with people, the other is an online channel.

To improve its people-to-people connections, the Council has bought a caravan. It can tow this around the city to venues and events where people gather and have a comfortable private space out of the weather where people can talk with council representatives.

It has been branded with Council colours and logos and should be a bit of a conversation starter in itself.

Council’s new online engagement initiative is what it plans to call “ICC TV”. This is a YouTube channel intended to provide a range of content about Council’s thinking, initiatives and projects. Hopefully the community will get behind this, particularly if the content is relevant and engaging, and provide useful feedback through this channel.

There are also some exciting ways that both the caravan and ICC TV could be linked to work together, which Council will no doubt seek to explore.

Hopefully Invercargill’s citizens will see value in these initiatives, rather than focusing on the costs. Mind you that will depend on how well the Council puts these new tools to work.

Initiatives like these are generally a good reflection of where an organisation’s mind-set is – embraced by the top levels of the organisation, filtering through planning and operational staff. If it is to be judged by these two exciting engagement initiatives, Invercargill City Council’s organisational community engagement mind-set is in a very positive space.

Good practice community engagement is about building positive and constructive relationships with communities to enable their valuable knowledge to be incorporated into effective decision-making, not just about meeting minimal legal requirements.

The Queenstown Lakes District Council clearly does not subscribe to this premise. On one hand its significance and engagement policy says that “we want to have the right conversations with the right people about the right issues before making significant decisions”, while on the other its senior managers are clearly unwilling to consult unless there is a legal requirement to do so.

An example of this is are reported concerns within the Wakatipu community about a lack of consultation over proposed Special Housing Areas. The Queenstown Lakes District Council says there is “no obligation to consult with anyone” and this is emphasised by a reported comment made by the council’s planning and development general manager who stated “There is no obligation under the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Act for the council to consult with anyone.”

Since 1 December 2014, changes to the Local Government Act require councils to have a significance and engagement policy. The purpose of such a policy is to enable the council and its communities to determine the degree of significance attached to particular issues, assets or other matters; to provide clarity about how and when communities can expect to be engaged in decisions; and to inform the council from the beginning of a decision-making process about the extent, form and type of engagement required.

The Queenstown Lakes District Council has a significance and engagement policy which sets out thresholds and criteria for determining significance. These are:

• Importance to the Queenstown Lakes District – the extent to which the matters impact on the environment, culture and people of the District (e.g. significant capital projects).
  
• Community Interest – the extent to which individuals, organisations, groups and sectors in the community are affected by the Council’s decisions.
  
• Inconsistency with existing policy and strategy – the extent of inconsistency and the likely impact.
  
• The impact on the Council’s capability and capacity – the impact on the objectives set out in the Financial Strategy, Ten Year Plan and Annual Plan.
  

Based on media reports, the special housing areas proposal is considered by the community to impact on people in the district and is clearly of significant community interest. On this basis one would conclude, as many in the affected area believe, that a requirement to consult has been triggered.

By ignoring the wishes of the community and acting with apparent disregard to its own policy, the council seriously undermines its relationship with its own community and creates an unnecessary controversy that will consume council resources dealing with community fallout. All of this could be avoided by council complying with its own significance and engagement policy and implementing a good practice community engagement process.