The path to a stronger local economy

Enabling local employment, educational opportunities and successful and innovative local businesses are the goals of a new strategy being developed to strengthen the City of Whittlesea’s local economy.

Strong Local Economy is one of the Whittlesea 2040 goals and Council is developing a strategy to better guide its path towards achieving the goal.

Chair Administrator Lydia Wilson said Council would be formalising strategies for each of the Whittlesea 2040 goals – Strong Local Economy, Connected Communities, Liveable Neighbourhoods and Sustainable Environment.

“It’s important that we clearly set out how we are going to achieve these goals to enable Council to plan and effectively resource our community’s priorities,” she said.

“The City of Whittlesea has experienced strong economic growth over the past decade, however the past 18 months have been challenging with COVID severely impacting local business and our community.”

“Now is the time to put steps in place to guide us moving forward in the COVID recovery phase and beyond.”

The strategy will be based on the key pillars of local employment, education opportunities and successful, innovative local businesses.

The strategy will set out how Council will support the creation of local jobs that match the skills of residents, the provision of education and training opportunities for all stages of life and foster a supportive environment that helps businesses to be successful.

Ms Wilson said it was important that the community and local businesses helped shape the strategy.

“Our community has told us a lot in recent times about what was important to them. We’ve used this to shape our Community Plan 2021-25 but we’ll also use this feedback to inform the Strong Local Economy Strategy,” she said.

Council has developed a discussion paper as the first step towards developing the strategy.

“We are now seeking community and business feedback on the discussion paper,” she said.

“We want to partner not only develop this strategy but to help us drive this vision of the City of Whittlesea’s Strong Local Economy.”

You can have your say on the Strong Local Economy Discussion Paper until the end of October. Visit engage.whittlesea.vic.gov.au for more details on how you can be involved.