LGOIMA Request Details: LG2119

Thank you for your enquiry about our decisions regarding Vaccine passes at our Council facilities. We apologise for the oversight of your original request, and are happy to provide this information under this LGOIMA process.

The Covid-19 pandemic created unprecedented challenges for our organisation and the wider community. We were aware at the time, and continue to be cognisant of the impact that our decisions had on members of the community and our staff, and we endeavoured to balance our responses to the specific situation we faced.

We followed the instructions and guidance from the government, including following the Traffic Light System, and we used the Risk Assessment process outlined by WorkSafe at the time.

I have attached the Risk Assessments we undertook for our Library and Makino Aquatic Centre, which were also publicly available on our website while they were in place from January 2022 to March 2022. The decision we ultimately took at the time was that at both our key facilities we would require Vaccination Passes under the red and orange settings of the Covid-19 Protection Framework, but we would not require them under the green setting.

We also provided alternate services for those who were not able to enter the facilities wherever this was possible – for example, our book deliveries/click and collect service from the library. We appreciate that this was not possible for the Makino Aquatic Centre.

We lifted the Vaccine Pass requirements on Monday 28 March (as per the attached Media Release) when the government reviewed their position on many of the Covid-19 requirements.

We remain hopeful that we have seen the end of impact on community services from the pandemic, and we will continue to communicate with our community as the situation evolves.

Warm regards,