Community Benefit Assessment Tool Strategic Planners Network 17 April 2009

What is it? A matrix that can be used to assess the overall community benefit from any particular council good or service Projects, activities, groups of activities etc can all be assessed to show what contribution they make to the community outcomes…

How does it work? First assesses the contribution of that item against the community outcomes Outcomes broken down into ‘outcome elements’ Benefit is assessed on a scale of how many people benefit, how many rateable properties are affected, improvement in community wellbeing, environmental enhancement or protection and so on.. C.O monitoring will allow us to be better at this over time.. Table Fig One show the impact descriptions..

Then… Having established how it stacks up next to the outcomes..’community priority’ must be determined.. This is an important step because in our case, the outcomes are not prioritised. Community plans, ratepayer surveys, submissions etc..more specific info about how important the outcome elements are.. Fig 2 shows the descriptors..

Equals… A Community benefit factor.. Low, Medium, High or Very High.(fig 3) This can be used as part of a broader decision making process- like working out CAPEX priorities which are often asset/finance driven..

Full Capex model factors.. All community outcome elements All available community priority information Number of people/amount of land affected Current significance thresholds internal and legislative definition Legislation and industry standards LOS commitment Environmental harms Risk of legal challenge Asset quality, maintenance imperatives etc etc And combines it to provide an overall delivery priority for all Council projects, services, activities or groups of activities..

Its good because.. It can show where Council is directing the most effort and the gaps Can demonstrate a customer driven planning process.. Its can be hardwired in to business cases, CAPEX models etc It is objective-strict thresholds were deliberately imbedded to prohibit the triumph of the pet project Can be applied to any set of outcomes and any item including OPEX projects

Limitations… A little bit flawed where a small number of people may benefit to an extreme degree vs a lot of people who benefit slightly..hard to maximise utility in this case! Needs a delivery matrix or similar component to pick up other essential things like maintenance, legislation or LOS commitments..

How robust is it? Based on the ASNZ Risk Management standards Audit have looked at it as part of our LTCCP Works in our CAPEX model software Similar to examples of non quantitative risk analysis frameworks used in non revenue risk management type work Better than nothing!?

Questions…