In this post of LeadershipTalks, we interviewed Henry Wong, chief executive officer of Many Local Government Area, New South Wales, Australia, and a 2015 Community Health and Safety Award winner. This award recognizes innovative local government programs or processes that improve the community's safety, health, and/or wellness, or enhance quality of life for the disadvantaged. 

Manly is a highly visited tourist destination and its central business district comprises retail, residential, and other commercial properities including more than 120 licensed restaurants, bars, and hotels that attract young people from surrounding areas. For many years, that district was known as a hotspot for alcohol-related assaults and offensive conduct, primarily on weddings between midnight and 6 a.m. And the annual social, environmental, and economic costs were approximately $1 million.

When community feedback from 2011 revealed high levels of fear about violence and antisocial behavior related to binge drinking and the "culture of alcohol in public places," the council implemented the Manly Council Crime Prevention Plan, a three-year, three-stage plan. You can find out more about this plan and Henry's award, here. 

Below, we discuss Henry's leadership role in the plan, his advice for other's who want to implement a similar plan, and the tools and resources used to make the plan successful.

Q1: How would you describe the Manly Council Crime Prevention Plan?

HW: Very successful – An evidence based plan combined with strong community involvement. The plan is now completed and been reported on to the State grant funding body.

Council recently completed the results of the annual community survey – this is a random yearly survey of Manly LGA residents to gauge their opinions on a variety of categories related to Council activities ranging from Customer Service to major works. In the past three years the category of Community Safety has been included. The score for Community Safety this year was 9.95 – higher than any other category, higher than any other year and the only category to show improvement. This is a long way from when we started initial planning a few years ago and crime and community safety was overwhelmingly the priority concern of the community.
 

Q2: How was the council organized to develop the successful three-year, three-stage plan? Were there sub-teams created? Weekly team meetings? Etc.

HW: The Community Safety and Place Management Committee meets once per month. They oversighted the project from commencement. A working group from the committee was formed to focus on the development of the plan.  A staff position, the Community Safety Co-ordinator was responsible for the most of the research, consultation, preparation, development and implementation as well as subsequent grant funding applications relating to projects within the plan.  This position reported to the working group and committee on a regular and as required basis.
 

Q3: Are there any tools and resources that the Council used to develop the plan?

HW: The NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research (www.bocsar.nsw.gov.au) were an important resource for quantitative statistics accompanied by local police data. Here are some others:

• The community consultation work done for the broader Council Community Strategic Planning identified many issues that were pertinent and able to be utilised for the Crime Prevention Plan. This saved a lot of work and avoided doubling up on community consultation. 
• Networking with other similar roles in other local government areas was also helpful.
• Research into successful crime prevention projects also helped avoid ‘re-inventing the wheel’. In our case we liaised with Sydney University who assisted on a broader level.
• Development of strong relationships and clear, ongoing communication between ‘key stakeholders’ was vital especially identified representatives from Police, Health, Chamber of Commerce, Community corrections drug and alcohol agencies and targeted community reps. 
   

Q4: Were there any challenges that the Council faced during the implementation of any of the three stages? If so, what did you do as a leader to help resolve them?

HW: Here were my three:

1. Staff turnover is always challenging with the loss of specialist corporate memory.
2. Development of community relationships needs to be nurtured and cannot be assumed.
3. When it comes to crime, negative stories are much easier for the media to report than positive ones so whilst everyone concerned wanted more ‘good news’ stories it was just as important to be able to address the negative ones with facts and figures.
    

Q5: What leadership advice would you give to another local government manager planning to develop a similar plan?

HW: I would ensure strong and consistent support of your specialist staff. They are the integral to maintaining and developing the social capital in the community and need to maintain positive and pro-active output.  Always acknowledge good work done at all levels.  When it came to implementing some of the actions and projects the goodwill and trust built up between Council and stakeholders was key to success of the projects.
 

Q6: Now that it’s 2016, what have you done to keep the plan from getting dusty?

HW: Final evaluation of the three year plan is now complete.  Discussions are now underway with a view to development of a new plan that will probably focus on sustainability of the successful results and maintaining the high levels of satisfaction with community safety combined with the crime reduction results.  In respect of alcohol related crime we will specifically be looking at ways we can continue to shift the drinking culture by encouraging alternative activities in the night economy and education of community particularly targeting the high risk populations ie. young adults.