The council, community and administration each has a unique role and responsibilities for the development of effective and sustainable integrated plans for the local area, and reporting on the progress of those plans.
A successful integrated planning and reporting process will deliver a:
- Strategic Community Plan that clearly links the community's aspirations with the council's vision and long term strategy
- Corporate Business Plan that integrates resourcing plans and specific council plans with the strategic community plan
- clearly stated vision for the future viability of the local area.
The Integrated Planning and Reporting Framework:
- recognises that planning for a local government is holistic in nature and driven by the community
- builds organisational and resource capability to meet community need
- optimises success by understanding the integration and interdependencies between the components
- emphasises performance monitoring so that local governments can adapt and respond to changes in community needs and the business environment.
The Integrated Planning and Reporting Guidelines provide a process that aims to:
- ensure community input is explicitly and reliably generated
- provide the capacity for location-specific planning where appropriate
- update long term objectives with these inputs
- identify the resourcing required to deliver long-term objectives, and
- clearly convey long term financial implications and strategies.
Legislation
All local governments are required to produce a plan for the future under S5.56 (1) of the Local Government Act 1995.
The
Local Government (Administration) Regulations 1996 provide a brief outline of the minimum requirements to meet this requirement, which includes the development of a strategic community plan and a corporate business plan.