Effective community engagement is at the heart of strong local government leadership.
Nicole Castillo, Community Communication and Engagement Officer at Blacktown City Council, shares how direct communication, strategic engagement initiatives, and trust-building practices help local government leaders connect with their communities.
As a speaker at Public Sector Comms Week 2025, Nicole will offer insights into practical approaches that enhance public confidence in local government. Register to the event here.
What do you believe is the most effective way for local government leaders to communicate directly with their community?
To effectively connect with their community, local government leaders need to firstly make themselves available and accessible to the community, and secondly actively listen to feedback.
At Blacktown City Council we support our Mayor and Councillors to do this through our community forums. Each year we hold at least 15 regular pop-up forums in shopping centres, common public areas and community festivals across a breadth of our city’s suburbs.
These locations are selected in order to provide a familiar, convenient, and comfortable environment for people to speak with the Mayor and local Councillors about the issues that are most important to their community.
We take local government leaders to their community, and through active listening, note taking and personal follow up from Council, help build a rapport with community members, increasing local confidence in their Council.
In your experience, what common barriers exist when local government leaders attempt to connect with the community, and how can these be overcome?
The most common barriers that tend to exist when government connects with the community seem to stem from the perceptions that community members feel they must argue their case with councillors or council.
People often report a perception that nothing will come of their feedback.
These issues of mistrust can be overcome through ensuring there is a feedback loop.
First, calm active listening, which allows the community member to have their say, and secondly, taking notes and recording contact details to ensure each enquiry generates a meaningful Council response.
Blacktown City Council ensures all enquiries raised at our pop-up forums are responded to within 5 to 7 working days. This prompt follow-up assures community members their feedback was raised and taken seriously, that it is valued, and builds rapport and trust.
How do you measure the success of community engagement efforts by local government leaders?
Feedback from the people in our city is a valuable planning tool.
To measure the success of Community Engagement efforts, Blacktown City Council considers both qualitative and quantitative data. This data strategically informs our plans and future community engagements.
We listen to what the people who live, work, study and socialise in our city have to tell us and use varied tools to gather this feedback including group work and surveys. This information both highlights the topics that are important to the people of our city, and also the changes they would like to see in our city.
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We collate their ideas for actions they would like to see taken, the ways they would like to engage with Council, and gain their feedback on how they feel we are supporting the community successfully or areas they would like to see improvement.
We also measure success through quantitative data including that related to attendance, demographics, social interactions with online forums, changes in our subscribed databases and frequency of topics being raised and responded to relevant to location and population.
We take careful note of how this data changes over time.
What are some examples of successful community engagement initiatives you’ve seen from local government leaders?
Blacktown City Council holds 2 different streams of forums to connect with our community.
Each year we hold at least 15 pop-up forums, spread evenly across our 54 suburbs.
We hold pop-up forums in high foot traffic locations covering strategically nominated suburbs creating accessibility for the community to chat with the Mayor and Councillors about the issues most important to their neighbourhood.
We bring government leaders to the community, making it easy and accessible for residents. This means we are able to hear directly from many of the 435,000 residents of diverse backgrounds who call Blacktown City home.
Blacktown City Council also holds multiple policy forums each year.
These help Council and our Mayor and Councillors to connect with and learn from the feedback of community members from diverse and sometimes marginalised groups.
We further share these forums though Council social media channels, reaching tens of thousands of people. The COVID pandemic encouraged our team to increase focus on this format. We have established a range of annual events – a Women’s Forum, Seniors Forum, Sports Forum (for representatives of sporting clubs and associations), Youth Forum and Budget Forum.
How do you ensure that all voices, particularly marginalised or underrepresented groups, are heard by local government leaders?
Blacktown City Council is committed to bringing our forums program to residents of all areas of our city, including those who may be of particularly marginalised or under represented groups.
We design our forums to ensure all residents, regardless of age, background, gender or socio-economic standing have the ability and accessibility to connect with our Mayor and Councillors, be heard and have their feedback valued.
What are the key takeaways attendees can expect to gain from your session during the event?
Public Sector Comms Week conference attendees can expect to gain practical ideas from the work being delivered by Blacktown City Council through our community engagement and forums program, which attendees can learn from, and then tailor and adapt to best align with their target audiences, budget, resources, strategic goals and community.
Adrianne Saplagio is a Content Producer at Comms Room, where she combines her passion for storytelling with her expertise in multimedia content creation. With a keen eye for detail and a knack for engaging audiences, Adrianne has been instrumental in crafting compelling narratives that resonate across various digital platforms.
