Council & Business
6 September, 2024
Hepburn council adopts plans for townships
The Hepburn Shire Council has unanimously adopted Township Structure Plans for communities like Clunes.
The Township Structure Plans and Rural Hepburn Strategy were developed after extensive consultation with a number of stakeholders.
Mayor Brian Hood, said that this was a critical body of work for the shire’s future, and a key goal of the council plan.
“The adoption of the Township Structure Plans and Rural Hepburn Strategy is the culmination of over two years work by our strategic planning team and others in the organisation and community, and is a once in a generation project,” he said.
“We couldn’t have achieved this without the feedback, knowledge and expertise of our community. We listened and we acted on submissions thereby making community-informed changes to all the draft township plans and the Rural Hepburn Strategy.
“We believe our genuine engagement will put the next councillor group in a strong position for the next phase of the project.”
The final engagement period for the draft township structure plans and rural strategy ran between May and June 2024.
Engagement included 32,441 page views of the Future Hepburn project page on Participate Hepburn, 12,971 letters and 8016 text messages were sent to the community to encourage submissions, seven community information sessions with 623 participants attending, a Future Hepburn webinar with 80 participants and 366 views, and a total of 577 submissions from community members and other stakeholders.
“We thank community members and groups who provided feedback on these important strategic documents online or in-person. It played a vital role in arriving at the final documents,” Mr Hood said.
“Council is required to follow Victorian State Government planning policy mandates that all municipalities have sufficient land available to cater for projected population growth, and this was a significant driver for adopting these plans and strategy.
“The adoption today does not mean any immediate changes to planning provisions — changes will take some time and involve future planning scheme amendments, along with more formal community and stakeholder consultation.
“There will also need to be future council decisions at key stages, independent expert scrutiny of council’s strategic work, and a decision from the Minister for Planning on whether to adopt or reject council’s proposed planning scheme amendments.”
The Hepburn council will now prioritise the administrative updating of the adopted documents incorporating changes, development of an implementation plan and advocacy to other tiers of government to assist with funding to proceed implementation of the plans.