The Shire of Merredin recognises that to meet current and future community expectations, we need to take into account the current and future needs of our Community. We need to consider long term how we are going to fund, maintain, deliver on our services and grow as a Community.
Integrated planning and reporting gives local governments a framework for establishing local priorities and to link this information to operational functions. As per the Local Government (Administration) Regulations 1996 each local government should adopt a Strategic Community Plan and a Corporate Business Plan. The Strategic Community Plan allows the Shire of Merredin to set ten year goals based on feedback from the Merredin community. From this, the Shire puts together a Corporate Business Plan which helps the Shire to choose goals from the Strategic Community Plan to achieve over the next four years. In turn the Corporate Business Plan lets the Shire determine the breakdown for its Budget which is reviewed and set on an annual basis.
Having this process allows the Merredin Community to have a strategic direction which translates that direction into actions for the Shire and strategies going forward. Through the process of annual review (the Annual Report), the Shire is also able to ensure that relevant services with adequate funding, assets and people are allocated in order to achieve the goals as set out.