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'Council is doing a lot but more help is needed to tackle cost-of-living crisis'

'Council is doing a lot but more help is needed to tackle cost-of-living crisis'
'Council is doing a lot but more help is needed to tackle cost-of-living crisis'

The chief executive of Renfrewshire Council has said the local authority is doing “a lot” to help people during the cost-of-living crisis, but warned those interventions won’t “resolve” the situation on their own.

Alan Russell elaborated on comments he had made in a child poverty action report, which described the challenge ahead as “of a scale beyond the influence of the council” and its local partners, at Wednesday’s Leadership Board.

The document, which provided an update on efforts to reduce child poverty in the area, as well as measures planned for the next year and beyond, was approved for publication at the meeting.

Mr Russell said that the current crisis is a “national and global experience” as he addressed councillors at the meeting.

He said: “The cost-of-living crisis is at such a scale across the country, affecting everyone, but those most vulnerable in our society are feeling it most.

“It is at such a scale that the purpose in that particular part of the report is to indicate that as much as the council is doing a lot across a wide spectrum of support mechanisms and interventions across communities - and those will help and be of assistance - it’s a recognition that those by themselves will not be enough to resolve those challenges, although it will assist.

“The scale of the crisis that we are seeing in our communities is a national and indeed a global experience.

“It’s happening across the country and across the globe, so it’s a national and an international challenge in terms of the impact of the economic volatility and disruption, which is linked to a whole range of factors, and I think probably, certainly in our own lifetime, is quite a unique set of circumstances that we’re seeing unfolding and the consequential impact of those.”