Healthy &
Inclusive Places

Landcom adopts a holistic approach to the delivery of healthy and inclusive places founded on equity for people of all ages and abilities.

For new projects we undertake social needs assessments to understand what amenities, services or programs are currently available to the immediate and surrounding community, and what gaps may need to be filled. We use this information to inform our future planning for infrastructure and community development programming.

As residents begin to live onsite we commence a continuous feedback loop via our Healthy & Inclusive Places survey (HIPs). This is an engagement tool used to gather data from residents of Landcom communities measuring satisfaction across dimensions such as design, community connection, safety, wellbeing, housing affordability and diversity based on the residents’ lived experience. We have adopted performance targets across these dimensions, striving for continuous improvement to meet the quality of life expectations of current and future residents.

To benchmark Landcom’s results against industry standards the survey also incorporates the Personal Wellbeing Index (PWI).²⁷ The PWI is designed to measure satisfaction with quality of life across seven domains: standard of living, health, life achievement, relationships, safety, community-connectedness and future security. Landcom uses resident satisfaction across the core elements of the PWI to measure success against our leadership goal to ‘enhance Landcom’s international status for delivering world class liveable places, founded on equity, affordability and inclusion by 2036’.

We use the results and resident feedback from the HIPs survey each year to drive performance improvements in the way we deliver our projects. This can include adjusting our approach to the design and delivery of future stages of a project or influencing the way we deliver community development programs and services.

Based on low FY18 performance results against our Community Connection targets we committed to undertake an evaluation of our Community Development and Welcome Program to determine past successes and areas of opportunity. The assessment found Landcom would benefit from an overarching framework to guide the way we approach and deliver community development. A shift to impact reporting would also support consistent evaluation of success and ability to communicate value creation.These recommendations were adopted during the reporting period, however due to the impacts of COVID-19 Landcom made the difficult decision to cancel our Healthy & Inclusive Places survey this year, which is the tool we use to measure success. We look forward to validating the effectiveness of our actions in the coming year.

For our FY20 performance results measured by our Healthy & Inclusive Places survey, see Health, Equity & Inclusion, Community Connection, & Safety below.

^{27 International Wellbeing Group (2013). Personal Wellbeing Index: 5th Edition. Melbourne: Australian Centre on Quality of Life, Deakin University http://www.acqol.com.au/instruments#measures}

Landcom’s Housing Diversity & Affordability Policy (FY17-FY20) was adopted to drive the delivery of diverse, affordable and accessible homes. The Policy is a clear reflection of Landcom’s commitment to create more affordable and sustainable communities.

Landcom defines Affordable Housing as dwellings managed or owned by a Community Housing Provider (CHP). CHPs are not-for-profit organisations that build and/or manage housing for eligible people on very low, low and moderate incomes or who are unable to access appropriate housing in the private market.

Landcom’s Housing Affordability & Diversity Policy requires 5-10% of housing in our projects to be provided as Affordable Rental Housing, owned or management by a CHP. The CHP may build the homes, and will manage eligibility and waiting lists, tenant services and property maintenance.

We also address housing diversity and accessibility in response to Sydney’s current market conditions. We aim to deliver a range of tenure options for owners and renters, improve the range of home options available in the market especially for first home buyers, and ensure people have the ability to access fit for purpose housing throughout their lifetime.

We complement this by advocating for and requiring accessible homes that embody Universal Design principles and are Liveable Housing Australia (LHA) certified.

For our FY20 performance against our Affordability & Diversity targets, see Affordability & Diversity Performance Results below.

We maintain a commitment to excellence in design and meaningful stakeholder participation from all those who have a stake in the evolution of our cities, including the communities which know them best.

Landcom has an established Design Advisory Panel (DAP). The DAP provides advice to Landcom on strategies to achieve design excellence and quality of urban design outcomes across our project portfolio. The DAP is comprised of industry experts with experience across design and environmental consultancies, government entities and the development sector. The objectives of the DAP are to support Landcom project teams with a critical design review process and provide access to industry experts for guidance and support.

As part of our management approach all projects are required to present to the DAP at least once per year as they progress through the masterplan and design stages. In addition, active projects that make significant reviews to future stages must also present to the DAP. Landcom’s aim is that this robust process will ensure enhanced design outcomes for the communities we deliver.

Landcom’s Join In Framework guides our approach to stakeholder engagement. The Framework has been developed in accordance with the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) guidelines, ‘which seeks to promote and improve the practice of public participation or community and stakeholder engagement, incorporating individuals, governments, institutions and other entities that affect the public interest throughout the world.’²⁸

^{28 International Association for Public Participation Australasia (2018) https://www.iap2.org.au/Home}

Our approach to engaging stakeholders is underpinned by the following principles:

For our FY20 performance against our Design through Engagement targets, see Design through Engagement Performance Results below.

Our Sustainable Places Strategy identifies a number of initiatives as future opportunities to enhance our Health, Equity & Inclusion and Community Connection focus areas. There are also previously identified priorities that we are retiring, as they have been materially integrated into our organisational approach. Our future priorities in this area are:

• exploring opportunities to advance innovation in education, health and wellbeing infrastructure
• piloting diverse housing projects to demonstrate innovation (retired - this has become BAU for Landcom and is governed by our housing and diversity policy targets)
• identifying mode-shift opportunities to reduce car dependency in appropriate locations.

Landcom has launched several demonstration projects in FY20 focused on diverse, affordable and innovative housing models. As such, we are retiring this from our future priorities, as it becomes integrated into business as usual.