Many of you will already be aware that Council has recently launched a Have Your Say digital engagement tool – haveyoursay.coffsharbour.nsw.gov.au – to keep the community informed and involved in a wide range of current consultations, projects and strategies.
This site is all about building and maintaining an ongoing dialogue with local residents about the issues that can impact them – whether that’s a draft plan for the future management of their favourite reserve, a new policy in the making, projects to help local businesses attract more custom, significant road upgrades or major facility upgrades.
Each project page offers many options to get involved such as surveys, polls, submissions, viewing videos or photos and signing up for planned workshops or site visits. Plus you can subscribe to receive regular email updates.
The site is very user-friendly and attractive and sets out each project in a very comprehensive and clear manner.
Our goal is to ensure we achieve very focussed consultation on important projects that can impact on individual members of the community, their families, the local economy and the overall future of the Coffs Harbour local government area – through a continual conversation with the community.
In addition, as part of our move towards offering more services online, we are also developing an Online Forms portal that will be made available in the New Year.
This is a major step away from the old model of printing off forms from our website, completing them and sending them in, or dropping them off in person at Council’s Customer Service Centre.
It’s also a big step-up from filling in a ‘virtual’ form online and emailing it to Council.
The new portal will offer forms in a fully digital format so that the information you put in is uploaded into Council’s systems instantaneously.
Processing times will be cut significantly with this approach – making it much more customer-friendly – and a lot of staff time will also be saved.
