At the 2005 Local Government Managers Australia National Congress in Canberra, FOCUS invited delegates to nominate an individual or team from their Council who is improving their Council’s operations and meeting community needs. In this edition, we showcase two more of our competition winners for 2005.
Deryn Atkinson, Manager Planning and Environmental Services, Corporation of the Town of Walkerville, South Australia
Situated adjacent to the north eastern boundary of the City of Adelaide, the Corporation of the Town of Walkerville is the smallest metropolitan Council in South Australia, covering only 3.57 hectares. Council has a population of 6,800 people and approximately 3,400 residential and commercial properties within its suburbs Gilberton, Medindie, Vale Park and Walkerville.
As Manager of Planning and Environmental Services, Deryn Atkinson is responsible for planning and building assessment and compliance, planning policy, public health, environmental protection, parking and dog registration and general animal management.
“I am lucky to have a great team of four staff who assist me in this role,” she said Deryn has worked as a planner in Local Government for the past four years. Before this, she had a career in the travel and tourism industry. Her first position upon graduating was as a Development Officer at the City of Victor Harbor.
“Victor Harbor provided a solid grounding in Local Governance, development assessment experience and a great work environment,” she said. “As part of a small team I was lucky to handle a diverse range of developments, varying from agriculture and tourism to commercial and residential. In December 2002, the Town of Walkerville lured me back to the City, offering me the position of Manager of Planning and Environmental Services.”
Walkerville CEO, Ron Wallace, nominated Deryn to be featured in FOCUS for her key role in the project management of the Walkerville Town Centre Revitalisation.
“Deryn is strongly committed to her position, always putting in extra time,” he said. “She has a busy family life with four young children and she does an exceptionally good job of keeping her family and work life together.”
The Town Centre Revitalisation is a long term project that aims to bring vitality back into this commercial centre.
Deryn is also involved in resource sharing projects with other Eastern Region Councils in Adelaide. She says the key challenge to her role is the ‘do it yourself’ aspect of working in a small Council, which can lead to the continual switching of hats throughout the day.
“This becomes evident through coordination of projects such as the revitalisation of the Town Centre, where there are many facets to be addressed,” she said. “Preparation of changes to Council’s Development Plan, a document that describes the desired character for the Council area and provides the tool for assessing development applications, is another challenge, along with mediating between neighbours and defending Development Assessment decisions in Court.”
Deryn believes the factors for success are persistence, passion for the work you do and ability to use initiative, as well as taking up opportunities to learn new things and maintaining a work/life balance.
She outlines important issues facing Local Government as being the following:
- the changing role of Local Government and the pressure on Councils to take on new responsibilities while minimising rate increases
- increasing accountability to communities and increasing reporting requirements
- legislation changes – Environment Protection Act and Amendment to Development Act (Sustainable Development Bill 2005) and planning for the implications
- regional cooperation as an alternative to creating large Councils
- shortage of planning, building and environmental staff.
Deryn said that a key challenge currently facing her Council is urban infill and changing character of the suburbs.
“Walkerville is currently experiencing its share of infill development with single properties being redeveloped into two, three and more,” she said. “People living in closer proximity to each other brings about issues of noise nuisance, boundary development, overlooking and overshadowing impacts.”
Deryn sees other issues facing Walkerville as protection of cultural and built heritage from demolition, and significant tree retention, preserving the valued character of localities where people live and work, and the declining Town Centre as residents shop outside the Council area.
Occupational Health and Safety Committee, the Municipality of Dorset, Tasmania
The Municipality of Dorset is a small rural Council located in north eastern Tasmania. While the municipality has a population of only 7,400 people, it covers quite a large area of 3,200 square kilometres. Proclaimed in 1993, Dorset was formed with the amalgamation of the former Municipalities of Ringarooma and Scottsdale.
Residents of Dorset enjoy a superb natural environment with clean air and beautiful scenery, ranging from coastal beaches to patchwork farmlands and temperate rain forests on the surrounding hills and mountains.
Dorset Council’s Occupational Health and Safety Committee was formed five years ago to increase safety in the workplace. Dorset’s General Manger, Greg Preece, said that when he moved to Dorset six years ago there was little emphasis on occupational health and safety and risk management. Being a key issue in his previous position, Greg decided to set up the OH&S Committee.
“The committee is extremely proactive and in the last year there has been no time lost due to injuries,” he said. “There has been a significant reduction in workers’ compensation claims, and key changes in attitudes towards safety as a result.”
Once an incident report is filed it is given to the report supervisor who establishes what caused the injury. All measures are then taken to prevent the same incident from recurring.
Greg Preece will only sign off reports when he is certain that all measures have been taken towards prevention.
Manager of Works and Infrastructure, Larry Smith, is Chairman of the committee. He said that the committee has representatives from all areas of Council.
“There are no distinct roles that any one person takes on within the committee,” he said. “We all work together in a team effort to keep our workplace safe and injury free.”
The committee coordinates internal audits, works on accident and injury reports, establishes the OH&S policy and organises staff training.
Larry Smith said that while operations run quite smoothly now, the main challenge for the team to date has been raising awareness within Council in general.
“Getting the organisation to take OH&S seriously was our initial test,” he said. “We worked hard to get all staff to think about safety in their areas.”
Greg Preece said that the committee was extremely successful in driving the safety message throughout the organisation in such a short period.
“Here at Dorset, we are lucky to have great support from management right through to general Council workers,” Larry Smith said. “Now the key challenge is keeping abreast of changes in legislation and safety requirements.”
The team is currently working on implementing a fitness program for staff. As an isolated community, there is little access to personal trainers and fitness assessors. Council is working to relocate a business or a professional to the area to provide ongoing assessments and program advice.
