Shaping Manningham's future
Update July 2025
Council endorsed Manningham’s suite of key strategic documents at its 30 June 2025 Council Meeting, marking a decisive step toward building a vibrant and sustainable future. This included the Council Plan 2025-2029 and 2025/26 Budget.
To view the full suite of strategic documents, visit our website.
How were the strategic plans informed?
Each of our strategic documents is informed by extensive community engagement conducted throughout 2024/25.
Manningham Community Panel
At the heart of this work was the deliberative community panel – a collaborative effort that brought together 37 community members to play a crucial role in helping determine key priorities for Manningham.
Panel members committed more than 1,680 collective hours of their time over six months and heard from over 50 speakers from Council and community.
Formed in September 2024, the Manningham Community Panel has played a crucial role in helping determine the key priorities for Manningham.
The Panel provided a list of recommendations to the Deputy Mayor at its final meeting on 1 February 2025.
We carefully considered each recommendation and prepared a detailed response document – outlining how we plan to approach and implement the recommendations into action. We’re committed to implementing the Panel’s recommendations to the fullest extent possible.
The panel's thoughtful, well-informed recommendations have directly shaped the priorities and direction of our strategic plans.
Broad community consultation
Many people have helped shape our community’s future. We thank everyone who contributed. We’re all part of the plan and your voices are shaping the future of our community.
We’ve been planning for the next four years, and we’ve done it by listening closely to our community.
Extensive community consultation has informed both our strategic planning and the Community Panel’s deliberations, ensuring that our plans are grounded in the priorities, needs and aspirations of our community. This included:
- A community-wide survey - we heard from 1,260 community members between May and July 2024. We asked what matters most to you and which three areas you think Council should focus on.
- Targeted Conversations - some residents joined our ‘Targeted Conversations’, a series of in-depth discussions with key groups – including young people, older adults, multicultural communities and partners. These conversations helped us better understand the needs and ideas of different people across our community.
- Individual submissions - many of you sent in your own ideas and suggestions through individual submissions, showing us how Council services can improve and how we can build a better future together.
- Research - we also considered other important information such as population and community forecasts, relevant government policies and strategies, expert advice from our service partners, our current plan and the resources we have available.
These community insights gave us a strong and balanced view of our community's wants and needs. It directly shaped our strategic planning and the work of our Community Panel.
Given the depth and quality of feedback received during this process, a separate public submission process will not be held for this year’s strategic plans.
This approach is in line with our Community Engagement Policy as required by the Local Government Act.
Questions?
- Email us at manningham@manningham.vic.gov.au
- Call us on 9840 9333
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