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Southern Social Planning Study

The Southern Social Planning Study 2005-2010 was a joint initiative of the City of Onkaparinga and the Southern Social Planning Alliance. Its purpose was to examine current and future human service needs in the Council area and develop a strategy that provides recommendations for the planning and provision of services to meet those identified needs over the next five years.

The study supports the leadership role of the Southern Social Planning Alliance in building interactive and effective partnerships across government and non-government agencies and with the private sector. By working together to seek innovative and pragmatic responses to community needs, the Southern Social Planning Alliance will contribute to greater levels of social cohesion and an optimistic future for all members of the community.

The study culminated in a number of strategies under eight key themes to address identified needs.

The Minister for Urban Development & Planning released the Ministerial Mount Barker Urban Growth Development Plan Amendment (DPA) in June 2010 for public consultation. This DPA proposes to rezone approximately 1300 hectares of rural land on the edges of Mt Barker and Nairne for residential and light industrial use.

With the aim of ensuring that its community was well informed and empowered to comment on the Ministerial DPA, the District Council of Mt Barker engaged URPS to run a series of information sessions for the local community. These six sessions were extremely well attended, with more than 300 people able to hear about and ask questions regarding the Ministerial DPA process and how to go about getting involved in this part of the planning system.

In a letter to the editor of the Mt Barker Courier, Jean Lovell of Nairne said that "Mt Barker Council is to be congratulated for its commitment to proper community consultation" and that URPS was "highly professional and responded in detail to questions in an articulate, honest and informed manner".

This is evidence of the success of these types of community information sessions and the goodwill and engagement that Mt Barker Council has fostered with its community through the process. We also believe that this type of process leads to informed and valuable input from the community to key planning initiatives such as this Ministerial DPA."