The expression of interest form closed on Friday 25 July and we'll be contacting everyone who applied with news of their membership and next steps.

Thanks to everyone who has signed up so far. We're now holding a couple of workshops with a small group to plan how the panel will run. We want it to be meaningful and useful for members and Council. We'll update you on this page in mid July.

Thank you to the 23 participants who took part in deliberative forum style workshops in July 2025. Their purpose was to co-design a community-led recruitment campaign.

Over two sessions they worked together to understand how community panels work, the importance of diverse representation and the demographic gaps in our initial recruitment campaign.
They explored ways to increase representation and learnt about barriers to participation. At the end of the two forums they'd developed their own recruitment strategies to implement over the following month.

We're really grateful for the insights they brought to the process and their cooperative work to strengthen the panel. Due to them taking time to learn and take action, the final panel membership is more diverse, more representative and well set up to start their role over the next year.