Community voice in planning

Your voice shaped our Community Vision and strategic plans

Our shared Community Vision, developed in 2021 and reviewed in 2024, was shaped by more than 4,000 residents sharing their thoughts and aspirations for how they wanted the Peninsula to look in 2040.

In 2025, a further 3,500 community members shared their ideas, concerns, and priorities to help guide our new strategic plans, including the Council Plan, Public Health and Wellbeing Plan, Financial Plan, and Asset Plan.

Reaching our community

To hear from a broad and diverse mix of voices, we connected with people in many ways:

1,569 survey responses
930 conversations at 18 pop-up locations across the Peninsula
466 community comments on the draft Council Plan and Public Health and Wellbeing Plan during their 6-week public exhibition
262 postcards completed by primary school students
44 kindergarten children in group activities
39 attendees representing 19 local and regional organisations attended the Health and Wellbeing Stakeholder Forum, delivered in partnership with Frankston City Council
70 responses to our youth survey (12–17 years)
3 in-person Community Conversations as part of our deliberative engagement

Our engagement in action

This video provides a snapshot of the engagement process, showing the various ways in which we connected with the community to draft our key strategic plans.

Children’s voices

Primary school children shared their ideas for the future of the Peninsula through creative postcards. It’s important we hear what matters most to our youngest community members and include them in planning for the future.

We also engaged with kindergarten-aged children, exploring what Council does and what they believe is important. Together, we created stories about how community members can stay happy and healthy, such as the example below:

“Princess Spunky lives on the Mornington Peninsula and she loves to eat healthy food like broccoli, apples, carrots, and all the vegetables. She loves skateboarding, running and being active. To help her mind feel happy, she loves reading, sleeping, and breathing healthy air. She feels calm at the skate park, library and the beach. She helps to keep her neighbourhood clean by giving our plants and trees water and putting rubbish in the bin, Princess Spunky thinks we need more rubbish bins at the beach and for the community to be able to go to community gardens more easily.”