Council
5 November, 2025
New plan supports a healthy shire
A NEW-LOOK Municipal Public Health and Wellbeing Plan was last week adopted by Corangamite Shire Council at its Ordinary Meeting of Council.
The plan, titled Healthy Well Corangamite Plan 2025-2029, focuses on strengthening community safety, preventing harm, supporting healthy eating and an active lifestyle, building resilience against adverse environmental and weather impacts and promoting equity, inclusion and access to health and wellbeing services.
The plan features 25 strategies under four priority areas, with content tailored following a number of community engagement sessions hosted by council across all townships in the shire.
Councillor Jo Beard said the four-year process for the report has been great, calling the final report “fantastic”.
“The fact we had such massive community engagement in our ‘Mega March’ – we got mighty feedback in March, and I think that informed this document too, which was great,” she said.
“We didn’t have to go out and force any engagement and feedback, so that was really wonderful.
“I’m really glad that we’ve had great feedback from our younger cohort in our communities, too – the engagement with the kids.
“I know the mayor has been working really closely, particularly in the school space to have their feedback.
“Knowing what their concerns are at a younger age is really important that’s being captured within this document as well.”
Cr Beard said, while the plan is a statutory requirement for council, steps were taken to ensure the plan remained relevant to the Corangamite Shire community.
“We know we have to do this – it is somewhat a bit of a tick-a-box when a new council is elected – but we make it really relevant to the Corangamite Shire people, which is something I’m really proud of,” she said.
“We don’t just make it one that we have to do – we actually really highly regard it.
“I’m loving the new name, too, because I think it’s a lot more relevant rather than the long-winded Municipal Health and Wellbeing Plan.
“I like that it’s a very broad document but it’s really relevant to the people of our communities.”
The health and wellbeing snapshot included in the report indicates the shire has a higher-than-average prevalence of chronic diseases and mental illnesses, higher preventable hospitalisation numbers, higher-than-average family violence incidents and emergency department presentations, higher obesity rates and lower-than-average participation in physical activity and a lower life expectancy compared to the state.
Contributing factors to these statistics include shortages of general practice availability, declining numbers of aged-care facility places, lack of transport options, high costs and a reliance on regional centres.
“We are in a disadvantaged area whether we like it or not – we’ve got such a diverse community, but it’s pretty evident when you look at our statistics unfortunately we’re a bit hard done by in some of the areas of risk and vulnerability,” Cr Beard said.
“That’s through no fault of our own – it can often just be geographical, and we’re not the only communities that are like that.
“We have to do whatever we can to be better – we shouldn’t just sit back and accept that, either.”
The shire, however, is better than the state average for perceived safety, has strong pharmacy access and has a lower gambling loss per capita than the state.
Cr Beard said partnerships were crucial to the plan, which council aimed to continue to strengthen.
“Partnerships when we do anything like this when it comes to health and wellbeing is really important because so much of it isn’t our responsibility – its’s a collaborative effort,” she said.
“We’ve already got those partnerships in place, but we’ve also identified where we can strengthen those as well.
“I think that’s really beneficial to the actions going forward.
“It’s also identified, too, that we’re responding continually to emerging needs – even though we have this four-year document, we’ve already outlined what the priority areas are and then the actions within those priority areas because it will be getting looked at on a yearly basis.
“It’s somewhat fluid, where it can be altered as need be if there’s something that comes out of it emerging.”
The plan was adopted unanimously.