2022 Stakeholder Engagement
Community Engagement on the draft Westleigh Park Master Plan in 2021 identified significant competing interests between key stakeholders of the park, the local mountain biking community and environment groups.
In response, Council adopted a position to work with the stakeholders to deliver a network that caters for beginner and intermediate riders while noting the need to protect high value biodiversity on site. In order to better understand the range of stakeholder views, we hosted seven workshops between March and June 2022 with key stakeholders including the mountain biking groups and environmental conservation groups. These sessions aimed to reach agreement on a proposed network of mountain bike trails for Westleigh Park.
The first four workshops were designed to identify and understand what we have in common and where differences lay within the community in terms of values, priorities and concerns for Westleigh Park. The activities at these workshops sought to lay the groundwork for a constructive co-design process based on these shared values and principles.
The final three co-design workshops were focused on working through the details of the ecological issues and trail design requirements. Several agreed points came out of the co-design workshops, including that all parties valued and cared for the natural environment at Westleigh Park and were seeking good outcomes for the Westleigh community and the surrounding area. However, there were still differences relating to the presence of mountain bike trails in the sensitive ecological areas of the park.
Following the enagement, we worked with consultant ecologists to undertake further flora and fauna surveys on the site to inform further refinements for any proposed trails on site.
Information webinar on 23 March 2022 with Prof. Catherine Pickering (Griffith University), Phil Downy (SNORC) and Steve Fedorow (Hornsby Shire Council).