Renfrewshire Council

Hello,

Last month I outlined some of my key priorities for 2023 and whilst we can't understate the size of the financial challenge ahead, I think it's important not to lose sight of what we've achieved, particularly over the last few years, and look ahead to some exciting developments for Renfrewshire.

I know our strength is our people and it's been great to see so many colleagues nominated for living our values. Reading about your experiences, the positive impact on your teams and in the local communities, is testament to what makes this place so special. Nurturing this supportive working environment, where we can all thrive, remains high on my agenda and I hope the information, events, manager training and discussions around health and wellbeing are helpful for you - and all the details are on our wellbeing webpages.

While we will have to make difficult decisions to manage our financial sustainability, and we must do everything we can to reduce our costs, we will continue to modernise and change how we work together across our organisation, with local communities and business, to sustain services. We are very good at what we do. We're an award-winning council and recognised as industry best practice in many elements of our service delivery. In the last year our housing, schools, youth work, economic development and Soft FM teams have celebrated award success and we continue to set the bar in our digital experience ambition. I'm looking forward to hearing more about your achievements when I meet with lots of you throughout the course of this year.

The last thing I'd like to touch on is progress on our cultural venues. And if you haven't seen the latest photos of Paisley Town Hall's transformation, please have a look. It's exciting to see our much-loved building take shape as a new top-class cultural and entertainment venue. Great work by the team and our OneRen partners and something else to look forward to in October as we host the Royal National Mòd and celebrate the opening of our new Learning and Cultural Hub in High Street.

Thanks for taking some time to watch this video or read the transcript. I hope you find it useful.

Thanks

Alan