The Council Plan 2025-2029 and Community Vision 2025-2035 were adopted by Council on 25 June 2025. These documents, along with the draft Financial Plan, Asset Plan and Health and Wellbeing Plan have been shaped by extensive community engagement, reflecting the priorities and aspirations of our residents.

Between October and November 2024, 27 engagement events across 19 locations were held with more than 2,270 community members engaged.

Input from these engagements has helped shape the draft Financial Plan, Asset Plan and the Health and Wellbeing Plan, 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 and provides direction of the Financial Plan, Asset Plan and Health and Wellbeing Plan.

The City of Ballarat faces the same inflationary pressures as experienced by the general public - the cost to deliver services and build and maintain assets across the municipality continues to increase each year. We are responsible for managing over $2 billion of community assets and delivering more than 80 different services and 120 different projects. The Financial Plan 2025-2035 provides long-term strategic guidance to achieve this.

Operating with a finite budget, we need to balance economic, social, cultural and environmental considerations to make sure our assets support the services and public amenities that our community need and expect, now and into the future. The Asset Plan 2025-2035 provides a clear direction about how the City of Ballarat proposes to manage the portfolio of public assets we control over the next 10 years and beyond to ensure responsible and sustainable stewardship for the benefit of current and future generations.

With many different environmental, societal and individual factors influencing a community's health and wellbeing, it can take a long time to achieve small improvements in health outcomes. The Health and Wellbeing Plan 2021-2031 (revised 2025) sets out the health priorities for the municipality, outlines strategies to prevent or reduce public health issues and supports the community to achieve optimum health and wellbeing.

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
• Funding priorities
• Preferences for growth and infrastructure
• Community 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, Community Vision, Financial Plan, Asset Plan and Health and Wellbeing Plan 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 and worked alongside Council to consider strategic priorities, community feedback, and legislative responsibilities.

The Ballarat Community Think Tank Report was considered in the development of the Council Plan, Community Vision, Financial Plan, Asset Plan and Health and Wellbeing 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.

We’re now sharing the draft Financial Plan 2025-2035, Asset Plan 2025-2035 and the Health and Wellbeing Plan 2021-2031 (revised 2025) for final feedback before they are presented to Council for adoption in September 2025.