Month-long consultation set to inform City of Albany council’s stance on retail trading hours regulation

The final details of next month’s consultation on Albany’s trading hours are almost locked in with a community survey set to assess the city’s appetite for permanently extending them. Coordinated by Albany-based Catalyst Research on behalf of the City of Albany, the consultation will run for four weeks during May with the start date to be confirmed. Albany mayor Greg Stocks said a “strong marketing campaign” would be important to getting widespread responses. He said the city must “reconnect with the community” to see if its position had changed since Albany’s retail trading hours regulation was last discussed “at length” and with “opposing views from sectors of the community”. Mr Stocks said the “quick and straightforward” survey was designed to invite responses on the “support, potential impact and sentiment around Albany’s current trading hours . . . in the most efficient way possible”. Demographics, the local economy, working structures and wider community issues will also be considered alongside the survey responses. After some councillors raised concerns about the credibility of an online survey, they were assured that respondents would be limited to one response per person and those who might struggle to complete the survey online would get help. City staff can help residents with the survey “either online or in hard copy” at the city’s North Road building or the Albany Public Library, Mr Stock said. However, he noted that staff capacity would determine the level of help available. City officers and Catalyst will present a report to the council with the survey data alongside the results of a consultation with the city’s business and tourism sectors to help councillors decide whether to request a variation to general regional retail trading hours. The report will recommend how councillors should interpret the data, but “ultimately, each elected member will need to take into account a range of information”, Mr Stocks said. Mr Stocks said it was important the council was presented with “an unbiased and true reflection” of the community’s position on trading hours. “To do that, the city and elected members will take a neutral stance throughout the project so that there is no influence on the final survey outcome that is received by council,” he said. The survey will be available on the City of Albany’s website when it goes live.