Great Southern Development Commission: Regional Development from Albany WA
The Great Southern Development Commission is the Western Australian government commission for the Great Southern region, and our office is at 110 Serpentine Road, Albany. Our stated purpose is to lead, coordinate and support regional development that strengthens the region’s economy, liveability and sustainability, connecting State priorities with local delivery. For anyone looking for business assistance in Albany and the wider Great Southern, we are one of the places to start.
We work in partnership rather than alone — with community, industry, Aboriginal organisations and other levels of government. We describe our own role in four words: cultivate, collaborate, connect and champion. In practice that means fostering conditions for development and job creation, building partnerships, linking people and businesses to services, funding and markets, and advocating for the region to broader audiences.
The Region We Cover
The Great Southern is one of nine regions in Western Australia and takes in several hundred kilometres of the State’s southern coastline, along with ancient mountain ranges, forest, farmland and coast. Our work stretches from the northern shires of Woodanilling and Kent down to the South Coast, and from Nornalup in the west to the Fitzgerald River National Park in the east.
Eleven local government areas sit inside that boundary: Albany, Broomehill-Tambellup, Cranbrook, Denmark, Gnowangerup, Jerramungup, Katanning, Kent, Kojonup, Plantagenet and Woodanilling. Our projects reach across all of them, from individual guidance for a local business or community group through to influencing strategic priorities at higher levels of government.
Grants, Funding and Support
Connecting industry, business and community to opportunities is one of our key roles, and a range of grant and funding opportunities for the Great Southern come up regularly.
What We Publish for Businesses and Community Groups
- Regional Economic Development Grants: our own grant program for the region.
- Grants Hub: a live list of grant and funding opportunities for the Great Southern, run in partnership with GrantGuru. It is free to use and you can set alerts for your sector. It is the place to look when our own programs are closed or a proposal falls outside our guidelines, because it also covers grants offered by other agencies and organisations.
- Local Opportunities: opportunities specific to the region, listed under our support pages.
- Knowledge Hub: reports, corporate documents and regional data, including the GSDC 2024-25 Annual Report, the GSDC Strategic Plan 2026-2029 and the Coastal Great Southern Regional Drought Resilience Plan.
Where We Focus
Our published focus areas are jobs, health, housing, community, environment, infrastructure and services, and organisational excellence. A Board of Management leads the commission and sets the strategic and policy direction, and our staff work within the region across a range of projects guided by that direction. The Strategic Plan 2026-2029, available to download from our site, sets out how we intend to work over that period.
We acknowledge that this is Noongar people’s country, from long ago to now and into the future — an acknowledgement published in Noongar and English on our website.
Getting in Touch with the Albany Office
Our Albany office is at 110 Serpentine Road, Albany WA, with postal mail to PO Box 280, Albany WA 6331. The phone number is (08) 9842 4888, or +61 8 9842 4888 from outside Australia. There is a contact form and a newsletter subscription on our website if you would rather keep an eye on regional development in the Great Southern that way. If you run a business or a community group in the region and are not sure where your idea fits, the commission is worth a call.