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Mayor Anne Baker says she is “honoured and excited” by Council winning Queensland’s top planning award – and thanked her coastal communities.

Isaac Regional Council was announced as the overall winner of the 2020 Queensland Award for Planning Excellence at a ceremony conducted recently by the Planning Institute of Australia in Brisbane.

“This is massive,” Mayor Baker said. “This is such a prestigious award and I am so proud of our planning staff, both past and present staff who have worked on this project.

“We won this award for our coastal planning scheme and coastal residents have played an absolutely vital role in its success.

“This has been such a journey – it’s been in development for more than five years – and our coastal residents have been on that journey with us.

“Initially, there was hostility towards the coastal planning process from local communities, and Council re-examined the way we were engaging with residents and changed our approach.

“Council absolutely acknowledges that the engagement was effective because the local residents were willing to work together with Council to find a better way to implement the State Planning Policy.

“Face-to-face meetings became more of a feature, we genuinely took notice of residents’ views and also their on-ground assistance turned out to be invaluable.

“I hope the residents of our Isaac coastal communities see winning Queensland’s top planning award as a win they can share and celebrate too.”

The project that won the top award is the Isaac Regional Planning Scheme and Coastal Planning Provisions.

“This project involves planning to accommodate natural hazards along a hundred kilometres of coastline – including such challenges as tidal surges, tropical cyclones and coastal erosion – for the communities of Greenhill, Carmila Beach, Clairview and St Lawrence,” Mayor Baker said.

“This is all about ensuring the sustainability and resilience of our coastal communities.”

The judges described the project as “a great piece of work that involved a natural hazard planning policy review, community consultation and detailed investigation to develop a new planning scheme that embodied a development assessment framework that provides for sustainable outcomes on the Isaac Coast”.

As well as the overall award, Isaac Regional Council also won the category award for “Hard Won Victory”.

In announcing this award, the Planning Institute of Australia judges said in part: “The Isaac Regional Planning Scheme and Coastal Planning Provisions project involved a natural hazard planning policy review, community consultation and technical investigation to develop a new planning scheme that embodied a development assessment framework that provides for sustainable outcomes on the Isaac Coast.

“A true hard-won victory requires challenges that seem insurmountable and treacherous when attempting to navigate towards great governance and community outcomes.

“With public perception eroding faster than coastlines, Isaac Regional Council has achieved an enviable milestone with assistance from its consultants,” the judges said.

“The Council has replaced outdated planning policies, updated inferior digital mapping and overcome public perceptions of reduced development rights to create a modern and robust planning scheme with advanced informatic digital mapping and data analysis, whilst gaining public support from multiple rounds of face-to-face public consultation communicating risk hazard mitigation and protection measures.

“This project will create a pivotal shift in natural disaster and storm inundation perception from the public and it will communicate better planning outcomes to the public and developers for years to come. For a regional council with limited resources, this was a huge achievement and truly a hard-won victory.”

Mayor Baker said the Isaac Region had been able to attract skilled and experienced planners.

“It is self-evident that the key element for planning excellence is excellent planners,” Mayor Baker said.

“While the Isaac Region might not have the same population or pool of locally grown talent to draw from as our southern and northern counterparts, we continue to attract and develop fantastic planners in our region.

“Many of our planners and council officers come to the Isaac Region for the same reasons as many of our residential population in the resources and agricultural sectors.

“Fuelled by aspiration and opportunity for a better quality of life and professional experiences unattainable elsewhere, our highly skilled and ambitious officers are able to apply their knowledge and talents across a very broad spectrum of planning challenges.

“While our geographic footprint approaches the size of Tasmania, we are not a large Council, having a population of just over 20,000 residents spread across regional and remote communities, each with its own unique set of planning challenges.

“This is why we are so very proud and excited to receive this award, to see the talents of our outstanding planners, community engagement officers and Council as a whole recognised by their planning peer group, especially as it relates to our approach to sustainable coastal planning scheme development.”

Mayor Baker said others who worked on the project with Council also deserve credit – “particularly planning experts Ethos Urban and coastal engineers from Cardno, who both possess a stellar track-record of success in planning for regional and coastal communities”.