Community Strategic Plan 2025-2035

Murray River Council’s Community Strategic Plan (CSP) is our 10-year roadmap that outlines the community's goals for the area and the key strategies needed to achieve them. The CSP guides the development of Council's plans, policies, budget and program of works.

Last updated in 2021/22, the CSP must be reviewed after every ordinary council election. With elections held in September 2024, we have worked with our newly elected council to refresh the CSP, ready for implementation in the 2025/2026 year.

Engagement history: how we first established our Plan.

The first major redevelopment of our CSP commenced in early 2022 to coincide with the election cycle of 2021-2024. During this time, an extensive engagement program provided stakeholders and the community with the opportunity to have input into its development. Through this process the community gave us more than 1650 ideas.

We then reviewed the suggestions provided; some were easy to implement, some were outside our scope and need to be addressed by other tiers of government or by private industry and others were going to take time for us to plan and action. It was exciting to see the variety of ideas our community had, and it was clear to us the things they value. All of these informed the development and adoption of our 2022-2032 Community Strategic Plan.

The updates: review and refresh 2025

Over the past three years, we have worked to develop strategies and action plans that incorporate ideas submitted during the 2022 community consultation process. These ideas have been tested and refined along the way, and we have integrated as many as possible into our ongoing ‘Business-as-Usual’ processes.

At the conclusion of the previous council term, we prepared a State of the Region Report, which was endorsed at the October 2024 council meeting. This report, available in the document menu on this page, assesses the progress and effectiveness of the 2022-2032 CSP. It also identifies strategic objectives to be carried forward into the updated 2025-2035 CSP. Serving as a critical bridging document, it highlights the community’s ongoing interest in the initiatives identified during the prior engagement processes.

Therefore, this updated Community Strategic Plan 2025-2035 builds on the foundations of previous strategies and top-level goals. This update represents a refresh of the existing document rather than a complete redevelopment, ensuring continuity and alignment with community priorities.

In regards to the types of projects and goals identified, not much has changed. We have however simplified the high-level strategic objectives to allow for our Delivery Program actions (4-year program of works) to be simpler to implement against the themes. In basic terms: we’ve cut down the wordy text!

Our 7 key themes also remain:

• A place of environmental sensitivity
• A place of progressive leadership
• A place of liveable communities
• A place of inclusion, culture and wellbeing
• A place of prosperity & resilience
• Connected Communities
• Tomorrow’s Technologies

Your involvement: the Draft Plan

Our draft 2025-2035 CSP was on display until 29 January 2025, receiving 16 submissions. The submissions received were primarily project-focused rather than speaking directly to the top-level strategies of the CSP. Therefore, the suggestions will be further investigated as we finalise the Delivery Program, which is the document that further details our agreed projects and actions.

Thank you to everyone who reviewed the draft plan to ensure it continues to reflect the communities’ vision for our area.

The final 2025-2035 Community Strategic Plan

Council adopted the final version of the 2025-35 CSP at the February 2025 Council meeting.

You can view this via the documents tab on this page.

Now that the CSP has been adopted, Council will continue to finalise its four-year Delivery Program which will guide our projects and actions over the next four years....all linking into our 7 themes!

The CSP and Delivery Program, along with the one-year Operational Plan will be ready for implementation in the 2025/26 financial year.