Theme 1: Community, services and facilities

Major achievement  

Strategic objective

Community services and facilities are high quality, sustainable, inclusive and strengthen resilience.  

Major initiative 1.6

Enhance the provision of early years education, disability and recreation services to the local community by completing the construction of the Canterbury Community Precinct and supporting the coordination of the community agencies on site to work together to optimise service provision.

The new main building and the renewed former Canterbury Bowls Pavilion located on Kendall Street opened for community use in March 2023. The Canterbury Neighbourhood Centre, Canterbury Community Garden, Canterbury Maternal and Child Health Centre, Canterbury Gardens Kindergarten, Playstation Occasional Care, and the Canterbury Toy Library are now all operating on site.

The second stage of works are underway to refurbish the former Canterbury Maternal and Child Health Centre and the former Canterbury Public Library buildings. These buildings will be home to Interchange Inner East and the historical societies once works are completed in late 2023.

Theme 1 performance

This is a breakdown of the strategic indicators, progress of initiatives and other service performance indicators for this theme. You can find out more detail about these indicators in the full report.

You can also read through our continuous improvement initiatives, community engagement, and benchmarking activities for this theme in the full report.

Strategic indicators

In almost all cases our strategic indicators saw consistent or improved results in FY2022-23. The strategic indicators that met or exceeded the forecast include the following.

Some indicators did not meet our forecast this year:

Progress of initiatives in the Budget

Initiatives that were completed in FY2022-23:

• Inform our planning and strategic direction to align its delivery of services to meet community needs by undertaking an analysis of the 2021 ABS data to identify current and projected changes in our population.
• Support older people to understand and navigate the Aged Care system by hosting information sessions and providing written and digital information on My Aged Care and commonwealth funded aged care services.
• Connect people living with a disability in Boroondara to physical activity opportunities by developing a Disability Sports Hub in collaboration with Disability Sport and Recreation (DSR) and the YMCA.
• Enrich and empower the community by providing high quality community-focused library collections, programs, facilities, and services through implementation of the 2022-23 actions from the Boroondara Library Action Plan 2020-2025.
• Support Local Historical societies to boost community access to their collections, which includes support to develop a model of operation at the Canterbury Community Precinct.

Initiatives that commenced in FY2022-23:

• Consider the needs and aspirations of people with a disability identified through community consultation by presenting a draft of the Boroondara Disability Action Plan 2023-27 to our councillors – 90% complete. People with disability, their families, and carers, as well as community groups and organisations that support and advocate for people with disability were consulted to understand the needs and aspirations of people with disability. Key elements of the draft Plan were presented to the Boroondara Community Disability Advisory Committee at its meetings for feedback. Officers are reviewing and incorporating feedback into the draft Plan, which will be presented to our councillors for endorsement for public exhibition in the first half of 2023-24. The draft Plan will guide our efforts to improve the experience of people with disability living, working, studying and visiting Boroondara. It provides a four-year vision and a two-year implementation plan for delivering actions. A new implementation plan will be developed at the end of 2025
• Create an all-ability recreation facility to meet current and future community needs by completing the construction of the Kew Recreation Centre – 50% complete. Construction of Kew Recreation Centre has been delayed due to the collapse of a section of the roof structure. Due to ongoing investigation and remediation activities, the project is reported as reduced progress to reflect deconstruction works.
• Enhance the provision of early years education, disability and recreation services to the local community by completing the construction of the Canterbury Community Precinct and supporting the coordination of the community agencies on site to work together to optimise service provision – 90% complete. Construction of Canterbury Community Centre Stage 1 is complete and open to the community for use. Stage 2 works commenced mid-April 2023 and are due for completion mid-late 2023.
• Make precincts easier to navigate and improve the consistency, readability, placement, and accessibility of signage by developing and adopting a Signage Strategy that outlines the style and use of signs that support facilities – 40% complete. At the start of the review of the Signage Style Guide, we found that the current City of Boroondara logo was not accessible and therefore non-compliant with the WCAG 2.0 legislative guidelines. This introduced additional scope to review as a critical input to the Signage Style Guide. The outcome of the review triggered a new project that involved a refresh of the logo, strapline and colour palette. This refreshed logo will now be applied in the Signage Style Guide, which will be delivered by December 2023.

Other service performance indicators

The following other service performance indicators and measures are based on the FY2022-23, unless stated otherwise. For more detail, including supporting commentary and how these results were calculated, see the full annual report PDF.

Animal management

Aquatic facilities

Food safety

Maternal and Child Health (MCH)

Libraries