RCV continues to focus on coordinating effective liaison between member councils, state and commonwealth governments and key stakeholders to be a collective voice, raising issues that are critical to rural councils and communities.

RCV engages with its member councils through regular e-newsletters and website updates promoting project learnings and achievements and sharing developed resources.

To enable local solutions, RCV continues the delivery of key events to facilitate networking, learning, capacity building and the identification of opportunities to leverage and partner with other regional events.
The annual Rural Summit brings together representatives across rural Victoria to challenge, influence and showcase economic development practices and achievements.

RCV will continue to use the biannual Mayors, Councillors and CEO Forum to create a better understanding of what is being planned across rural regions, and to explore opportunities to be action focused, to value-add and to collaborate at the local and regional level.

RCV’s commitment to the sharing of learning, research, and development of evidence-based policy continues to be a priority with effort directed towards working alongside government, industry and the community.

For Year 2 of the Networked Rural Councils program RCV will continue to direct effort and resources to the promotion of planning for small lots tools and resources (developed in Year 1), and developing a stronger enforcement process model for rural councils.

A significant challenge for rural councils is managing settlement change and the associated infrastructure and service delivery costs to councils over time. RCV is developing a financial modelling tool which will have benefits for both the planning, infrastructure and the finance departments.

RCV acknowledges that through building capacity and resilience in local governments, councillors and council officers are able to support economic development activity and increase the sustainability of rural communities.

Projects in this workstream focus on knowledge transfer and skills development using training and workshops that will assist rural councils in delivering economic development outcomes to their region.

RCV will partner with other providers to deliver mentoring, training and support for rural councils.

The liveability of rural Victoria is bolstered through population attraction and retention initiatives which are planned in this
workstream.

The Regional Victoria Living Expo 2013 will provide rural councils with an opportunity to showcase all that regional Victoria has to offer to tempt city dwellers to re-locate to rural communities for work and business. This will be further supported by the Open Day concept, which is new for 2013.

Another project in this workstream will focus on developing understanding of the opportunity for rural councils to enhance their population and business attraction and retention by harnessing ICT solutions.

A toolkit will also be developed to enable Victoria’s 38 rural councils to more easily and confidently identify effective approaches to attracting and retaining residents in their towns and municipalities