Community safety and housing ranked the two biggest issues in the City of Bunbury’s Strategic Community Plan

Community safety, crime prevention and access to affordable housing have been singled out by residents as the highest priority issues for Bunbury’s future. City of Bunbury councillors recently passed the 2022-2032 Strategic Community Plan at an ordinary meeting, based on a survey response from 1000 residents about what problems mattered most to them. Safety, crime and housing topped the priority list, followed by sustainability, climate action, developing the CBD, boosting marketing and focusing on new tourism attractions to attract more visitors. Council documents said the endorsed plan would guide the future direction for City and outline the long-term vision, values and aspirations of the organisation. City of Bunbury Mayor Jaysen Miguel said the plan was a document driven by the community for the community. “It is the community’s document rather than our document, so we have had input the whole way with consultation periods,” he said. “We have gathered all the information and found out what is important and the priorities to the community, and then put it into a plan.” Mr Miguel said the council and staff had also had input on the document and the focus was now aligning the plan with the City’s Corporate Business Plan. “(We’re) aligning our SCP so we have a solid plan that we know is what we want to achieve, and then aligning that up with Corporate Business Plan,” he said. “I think previously we probably had our SCP as a stand alone document, now we are trying to align them so we can know this is our plan, this is our priorities and this is what we want to deliver, and getting that to work back into our Corporate Business Plan and how we can pay for some of these things.” Mr Miguel thanked the community for their input and said it was an exciting time for the city to start putting the priorities into action.