I WOULD like to start by wishing everyone a happy new year and I hope you all had a nice relaxing time with your family and friends over the festive period.

One of the best things about Christmas for me is the hustle and bustle of my children and grandchildren being together and making memories.

It may be a new year but we still have a lot of big challenges ahead. As most people will already know the previous SNP administration spent all the free reserves, and left a £14m budget gap for 2023.

Since then, we have seen the cost-of-living pressures including higher energy costs, staff costs and various other cost pressures which pushed the budget gap up to £21m.

At the council meeting in December early actions were taken to reduce the budget gap but we still have more savings to find. Despite the Scottish Government seeing a 6.2 per cent increase in its funding, our core funding was cut by a further £272,000 for next year.

All 32 Cosla leaders have called on the Scottish Government for more money for local government to protect services and jobs.

I know the leader of the council has written to the deputy first minister seeking extra funding and he has also written to the two constituency MSPs and the West of Scotland MSPs to ask them to lobby the Scottish Government for more funding for West Dunbartonshire.

I wanted to ensure we continued to help people who were struggling during the cost-of-living crisis. In October, a £1m capital fund was established over five years, with £200,000 available each year to help with local projects.

I was delighted to see the response from community groups who bid for this funding so far to help our residents cope with the cost of living crisis, so thank you to all those volunteers. We also funded the successful swim, gym and sports camps initiatives this year and plan to continue with this in the coming years.

The additional funding we gave to food banks helped to supplement food supplies so they can cope with the increased demand for their services. We realise that we can’t do everything but I really hope this has made a difference in our communities. In December we committed another £1m towards the cost of living over the next four years for local cost-of-living initiatives.

Finally, over the past few years, we had to come together to deal with a pandemic and a cost-of-living crisis, but as this new year begins I really hope that the our communities continue to work together and support each other to create a better place to live, work and raise our families.