Audit of Local Land Services' local strategic plans

The Local Land Services Act 2013 (the Act) requires each of the 11 Local Land Services boards to prepare and deliver a local strategic plan for their region.

The purpose of a local strategic plan is to set the vision, priorities and strategy in respect of the delivery of local land services in the region, with a focus on appropriate economic, social and environmental outcomes.

Under the Act, the Minister is to ensure that each LLS local strategic plan is audited to ascertain whether its provisions are being given effect. In November 2024, the Minister for Agriculture appointed the Commission as the independent auditor to audit the implementation of 11 local strategic plans (for the period 2021 – 2026).

The audit examined the effectiveness of key business processes and success measurement practices supporting implementation of the local strategic plans, focusing on two lines of inquiry (Figure 1). The first line of inquiry focused on business processes and consisted of five audit questions covering communication, planning, resourcing, prioritisation and statewide support processes. The second line of inquiry focused on measurement of success and consisted of three audit questions covering target setting, monitoring of outcomes and adaptive management.

Figure 1: Audit scope overview

In June 2025, we provided 11 draft local strategic plan audit reports for review the General Managers and Board Chairs of each Local Land Services region.

We received feedback from each of the 11 Local Land Services regions in July 2025 and are now preparing the audit reports for the Minister's consideration. We are also preparing an overarching summary report of the audit findings for all regions for the Minister.

Audit reports will be made available on our website once we have received the Minister's response or in a reasonable time of their submission to the Minister in line with our legislative responsibilities.