Reserve Management Plan update

Council manages and maintains over 130 parks and reserves on your behalf – from large playgrounds, sportsgrounds, and freshwater esplanades and native bush scenic reserves to pocket-sized parks and smaller neighbourhood green spaces.

These spaces make our towns and neigbourhoods better places to live and protect our unique biodiversity. They contribute to happy, healthy communities where we enjoy physical activity, community connection, mental wellbeing, cultural activities, a green environment and fun!

Help us prepare an omnibus Reserve Management Plan

Under the Reserves Act 1977, we're required to have fit-for-purpose management plans for the parks and reserves we manage. These plans must reflect community needs, legal requirements and council strategies.

Reserve Management Plans contain our community's vision for a reserve or group of reserves and set out objectives, policies and rules that guide their use, management, protection or development.

Most of our parks and reserves have no management plan and many of those that do are outdated, so we're developing an omnibus Reserve Management Plan (RMP) covering all the parks and reserves Council manages in our district.

To help us develop our draft reserve management plan, we'd like you to tell us:

• what you value most about your local parks and reserves
• what key issues or activities you think impact a particular reserve and its users
• how we should be protecting our parks and reserves
• your ideas for the future and anything else you'd like us to consider in the draft plan.

This isn't a formal consultation – that will come later when we'll ask for submissions and hold hearings on the proposed plan. Right now, this is your opportunity to share your ideas early so that we can include what's most important to you in the draft plan.

Need more background info? See our frequently asked questions and documents or you can ask a question below.

Your feedback from this preliminary engagement will help us shape the development of the draft Reserve Management Plan. We will publish a summary of what we've heard on our website after the engagement period has closed.

Once the draft plan is developed, we'll open formal consultation, and you can make a submission. Those wishing to speak to their submission may do so at our hearings. A final plan will then be prepared and put to Council.

Follow this project if you'd like to stay informed and be notified when the formal consultation opens on the draft RMP.