Croquet Vic plans ahead

Croquet Victoria is currently running with a Strategic Plan for the period 2015 to 2020. We also have a rolling implementation plan which includes activities for each year of the plan (now updated for 2020).

A working group has now started work on our next Strategic Plan, which will run from 2021 to 2025. This plan will incorporate relevant action items from the Croquet Infrastructure Plan for the decade 2020 to 2030, which was endorsed by Council in April 2019 (see below).

The timeline for Council to consider the development of the new Strategic Plan is as follows:

vision and goals (December 2019)
strategies to achieve the goals (February 2020)
alignment between the strategies and the budget (April 2020)
outcome measures – how will we measure achievement of our goals (June 2020)
initial implementation plan and milestones (August 2020)
the finalised plan for 2021 – 2025 (October 2020 – in time for it to inform 2021 budget planning).

In line with this timeline, Council considered a first draft of the Vision and Goals at its October meeting, endorsed it for distribution to clubs and regions for feedback, and approved an updated version at its December meeting - now attached to the minutes of that meeting.

The strategies to achieve the goals were endorsed at the Council meeting on 26 February 2020 - see the draft minutes for the paper which was discussed.

Croquet infrastructure plan 2020-2030

BACKGROUND

In late 2017 the Department of Sport and Recreation awarded Croquet Victoria a grant of $40,000 to fund the development of a ten year infrastructure plan for croquet across the area of Croquet Victoria, to run from 2020 to 2030.

Jayson Moran of Insight Leisure Planning was appointed as the consultant to undertake the project. A reference group for the project was also established, comprising two SRV representatives (Ben O’Brien and Kirsty Reidy), a local government officer (Mark Patterson, Manager of Sport and Active Living at Ballarat City Council), and the CEO of a statewide sporting association (Sam Watson, General Manager, Lacrosse Victoria).

For this project, information was collected about the facilities at every club in Croquet Victoria. In early 2018, LGAs, clubs and regions were surveyed. Later in the year a background information document and an initial Issues and Opportunities paper were sent to regions and clubs for comment. This feedback informed a set of draft documents, which were circulated for feedback in February / March 2019. Comments were received from 30 LGAs and a small number of individuals, clubs and regions. These were taken into account in the final documents.

CURRENT PROJECT STATUS

Three documents were approved by Council at their meeting on 15 April 2019.

Executive Summary and Action Plan.
Final Report, including a hierarchy framework for facilities at local, district, regional and state level, together with other material for updating our Croquet Facility Guide (Croquet Facility Guide, also available in a Full Colour Version).
Background Research Report.

They provide a basis for a rolling action plan over the period 2020 to 2030.

Council agreed in April 2019 that it would be desirable to maintain an updated database of information on club membership and facilities along the lines of the information provided in the Background Research Report. This will support forward planning by clubs and Croquet Victoria.

To achieve this, clubs are being asked to update club infrastructure data in January each year, starting in 2020. A link to club data is available for each club via their Manage Your Club page. Data collection for 2020 is now complete with 100% of clubs participating - most useful and a much appreciated result.