Thank you to everyone who contributed ideas and feedback during the first stages of consultation. Your input has shaped the draft Council Plan 2025–2029 and the updated Community Vision 2025-2035, which are now open for feedback.

Open the below tabs to review the documents and provide your feedback.

The Council Plan is a strategic document that outlines the key priorities, goals, and actions Council will focus on between 2025 and 2029. It guides how Council delivers services, programs, and infrastructure.

Every four years the City of Ballarat develops a new Council plan to provide the direction for the term of the new council.

The direction, focus and priority areas, including all of our core services are shaped by the demands of the population and the needs of the community.

The Community Vision is a document which was developed in collaboration with the Ballarat community in 2021. It has an outlook of up to 10 years and describes the community’s aspirations for the future of Ballarat.

The Vision feeds directly into the Council Plan and is reflected in its goals and actions that will enable the City of Ballarat to achieve the Community Vision.

In October and November 2024, we asked the Ballarat community to share their views on a range of issues. Through surveys, pop-up sessions, and workshops, we heard from more than 2,200 people. The survey explored:

• Whether the Community Vision reflects current aspirations
• What may be missing from the Vision
• Preferences for growth, infrastructure, identity, transport, the environment, and health and wellbeing priorities

We also engaged directly with children and young people through the Children’s Advisory Committee.

Below is a snapshot of the Council Plan and Community Vision broader community engagement that was undertaken.

To explore this feedback in more detail, we formed the Ballarat Community Think Tank in early 2025 – a deliberative panel of 43 community members, sourced through a process using a ‘Mini Ballarat’ model.* Over 10,000 invitation letters were sent to randomly selected households, and panel members were chosen to reflect Ballarat’s diversity (including gender, age, and location).

The panel met across three facilitated sessions:

• Meet and Greet – Tuesday 18 February, 6:00pm–9:00pm
• Workshop Day 1 – Saturday 22 February, 9:00am–4:00pm
  • (Reviewed the Community Vision, Q&A with staff, the think tank began shaping draft priorities)

• Workshop Day 2 – Sunday 2 March, 9:00am–4:00pm
  • (Consolidated priorities and presented the City of Ballarat Community Think Tank Report to the Mayor and CEO)

The Ballarat Community Think Tank Report was considered in the development of the draft Council Plan.

* ‘Mini Ballarat’ refers to a deliberative engagement model in which participants are selected to reflect the broader population using demographic and geographic data. In this case, over 10,000 letters were sent to randomly selected households across Ballarat, inviting expressions of interest. From these, 43 participants were selected to represent Ballarat’s diversity across gender, age, suburb, and other characteristics aligned with ABS data.

This approach is considered best practice in community engagement, particularly for deliberative processes, as it ensures that a broad cross-section of the community is included in decision-making. It helps build legitimacy, reduces bias, and brings a wide range of lived experiences and perspectives into the discussion.

As part of their work, the panel also reviewed and refined the Community Vision, which was originally developed in 2021 after engagement with nearly 2,000 residents and over 4,000 contributions.

The panel used the 2024/25 community survey results, where 82% of the approximately 1,700 respondents said the Vision remained relevant to Ballarat’s future.

The updated Community Vision 2025-2035 has guided the development of the draft Council Plan.

We’re now sharing the draft Council Plan 2025-2029 and the updated Community Vision 2025-2035 for final feedback before they are presented to Council for adoption in June 2025.