1. Community Benefit Assessment Tool
Strategic Planners Network
17 April 2009

2. 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…

3. 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..

4. 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..

5. 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..

6. 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..

7. 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

8. 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..

9. 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!?

10. Questions…