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What is this tool for?

The purpose of this guide is to ensure customer-facing council staff consistently and effectively triage customer planning permit pre-application enquiries to the appropriate council resource or service. It includes a conversation guide for common conversations, and a list of enquiries that are commonly misplaced to planning, and where they are meant to be directed.

Instructions for use

The tool can be edited and customised to reflect the appropriate enquiry triage enquiries, and conversation enquiries in your council.

Updating text on the triage guide

The goal of this tool is to ensure enquiries are sent to the correct council department at the first point of contact. Therefore, the text should be updated to reflect the common conversations and commonly misplaced enquiries in your council.

Where should the triage guide be available

The triage guide is an internal facing document to guide customer service staff and should be easily accessible within internal council systems. This guide should also be provided to all new starters in the relevant department as part of their onboarding, to ensure the correct process is understood and followed immediately.

Tips to get the most out of this tool

For this tool to be most effective at your council, we recommend:

  • customising the conversation guide and triage examples to reflect the common enquiries at your council
  • ensure planning and admin staff are familiar with the location and content, so they can use the tool to triage questions and assist applicants
  • remove highlighted text prior to publishing the template internally
  • store a copy where it can be easily located for staff to utilise.

Assisting council staff in triaging customer planning permit pre-application enquiries to the appropriate council resource or service improves applicant experience and reduces pressure on planning who have to re-triage enquiries that have gone to the wrong department.

Page last updated: 01/07/24