Willoughby City Council commissioned Engage2 to conduct an independent assessment of community submissions gathered during consultation on its Draft Housing Strategy and 10 Local Centres Strategies. Our assessment generated insights about the concerns, issues, and ideas raised by the community.
The engagement
The Council used three methods to collect feedback across the 11 draft strategies:
- Online surveys hosted in Engagement HQ.
- In person during roundtable events.
- Formal written submissions received by email and post.
Around 2,000 responses were received across the 11 strategies, each of which had its own survey of approximately 15 questions — 165 questions in total. Responses combined structured quantitative data with open-ended qualitative feedback.
Our approach
To build a complete picture of community sentiment, we cross-referenced survey responses with qualitative feedback from written submissions and workshops. A key step was identifying unique participants, which allowed us to assess the representativeness of the engagement and understand how people were engaging across different methods.
What the community said
Across the strategies, community members consistently called for the revitalisation of village centres — but without compromising their character, heritage, or scale. Parking was also a significant and recurring concern.
Our outputs
Our assessment report — 190 pages and 26,000 words — was published on Willoughby City Council’s website. Alongside the report, we developed a suite of supporting materials presenting data in accessible, practical formats so the planners in the project team could use the communities input to finalise the Draft Housing and Local Centres Strategies.
Learn how to effectively engage with your community, get in touch with Engage2.
