Resilient Sydney Strategy Engagement
Resilient Sydney, NSW
Resilient Sydney is a collaboration of 33 Greater Sydney councils working to develop and apply a city-wide resilience strategy that aims to strengthen the city’s ability to withstand, adapt to and recover from shocks and stresses.
Communities across Greater Sydney are facing an escalation in the frequency and magnitude of acute shocks and day-to-day stresses – from climate impacts and natural hazards to cost-of-living pressures and social stress.
The Resilient Sydney Strategy 2025-2030 builds on the success of the Resilient Sydney Strategy 2018 and follows the methodology developed by the 100 Resilient Cities program. It includes strategic directions to support collaborative action to increase the resilience of Greater Sydney to shocks and stresses.
CRED Consulting was engaged to design and deliver a large-scale, inclusive community engagement program to ensure the strategy was grounded in lived experience. The engagement reached communities across Greater Sydney and informed the final strategy, published in April 2025, ensuring it reflects what matters most to people and places across the region.
HOW WE DID IT
CRED Consulting designed and delivered a two-stage, evidence-led engagement program – using broad community workshops to build a wide evidence base, followed by community panel deliberation to test insights and develop recommendations.
We delivered:
- Six full-day community workshops across Greater Sydney, engaging 300 randomly selected, broadly representative participants to explore lived experience of shocks and stresses. Participants were independently recruited by Taverner Research to ensure demographic diversity and representativeness.
- Bespoke, accessible engagement tools, including colourful visual activity sheets adapted from risk-mapping frameworks for small-group discussions, whole-group discussion, online polling and individual reflection.
- Two targeted focus groups with a random selection of participants from the workshops who live in apartments (owners and renters) to explore preparedness, governance and resilience challenges unique to higher-density living.
- A representative deliberative community panel of 50 participants, drawn from the workshop cohort, who collaborated over two full day sessions to answer the question: “What is the role of the community in responding to the increasing risk of natural disasters?” The community panel interviewed 15 experts in disaster resilience, planning and governance to build shared understanding, The experts included:
- Kerry Robinson OAM, Chief Executive Officer, Blacktown City Council
- Ryan Johnstone, Office of the Advocate for Children and Young People (ACYP)
- Hala Hubraq, A/Executive Director Adaptation and Mitigation at the NSW Reconstruction Authority
- Paul Box, Senior Principal Research Consultant, CSIRO
- Cara Varian, Chief Executive Officer, NSW Council of Social Services (NCOSS)
- Aaron Fleming, Manager Regional Delivery, NSW Reconstruction Authority
- Nick Chapman, Resilience Advisor, Willoughby Council
- Andrew Gissing, Chief Executive Officer, Natural Hazards Research Australia
- Sam Kernaghan, Director Resilience Program, Committee for Sydney
- Peta Collins, Project Director, Regional Adaptive Pathways Planning, NSW Department of Planning Housing and Infrastructure
- Linda Bracken, Board Member Metro Local Land Service
- Rose Glassock, NSW Department of Education
- Beck Dawson, Chief Resilience Officer, Resilient Sydney
- Rebecca Wood, Project Manager, Resilient Sydney
- David Sanderson, Inaugural Judith Neilson Professor of Architecture, UNSW
- Ross Edwards, Emergency Planning Manager, City of Sydney
The community panel collectively agreed on eight recommendations which informed the Resilient Sydney Strategy 2025-2030.
Across the six community workshops, we built a rich understanding of what makes it easier – and harder – for people to prepare for, respond to and recover from shocks and stresses. The workshops also strengthened participants’ capacity to engage confidently and meaningfully in dialogue about disaster risk.
Image credit: Cassandra Hannagan
OUTCOMES
The engagement ensured the Resilient Sydney Strategy 2025–2030 is grounded in lived experience. Insights from 300 community members revealed the everyday barriers, strengths and priorities shaping resilience across Greater Sydney.
The deliberative panel’s recommendations provide a clear mandate for collective action and a shared articulation of the role communities want to play in building resilience.
Beyond informing strategy directions, the process built participants’ confidence, capability and trust, enabling people to engage meaningfully in complex conversations about risk, preparedness and collective action.
Engagement evaluation results demonstrated very high levels of satisfaction and engagement in the process.
- 90% of panel participants said they would participate in a similar process again
- 98% agreed the workshops were well-organised, inclusive and well-facilitated
Read The Resilient Sydney Strategy 2025–2030 and the Resilient Sydney Engagement Outcomes Report 2024 here.
“CRED was professional, responsive and adaptable. They were warm in their interactions with our community and staff.”
Christobel Ferguson
Technical Lead
Resilience Sydney