RENFREWSHIRE Council’s new chief executive has told how his remarkable career journey has taken him from selling newspapers to the top of the local authority tree.

Alan Russell now leads a major organisation which employs thousands of people and has a multi-million pound budget.

It is a far cry from his first taste of the world of work, which involved selling newspapers to employees at the Caterpillar factory in Uddingston.

At the time, Glasgow’s local paper cost just 9p but staff would file out en masse and pass him a 10p coin for their dose of daily news...giving him a tidy profit.

“It was a brilliant job,” said Alan. “Thousands of guys would pile out and throw you 10p and you would get the 1p tip because they didn’t want the change.

“But then my business model collapsed when the paper went up to 10p.”

After coming through the NHS national finance training scheme, Alan worked for the health service for a couple of years before joining Renfrewshire Council in 1998.

He was director of finance before taking up his current post as the replacement for Sandra Black, who has retired.

Alan’s financial knowledge is sure to come in handy as the council aims to balance the books at the same time as ensuring communities are supported during the Covid pandemic.

It is anticipated the local authority will be faced with a funding gap of approximately £26million between now and 2025, prior to any decisions being made on council tax bills.

With this in mind, Alan hopes to see some changes in the way local government is funded.

He said: “The Scottish Government budget was announced just a couple of weeks ago and I think that presents a continuation of a real financial challenge for local government.

“There’s more resource put into local government but those are linked to new priorities as part of that budget settlement, so the financial challenge in terms of the need to continue to deliver significant savings and continue to transform the organisation to ensure we are financially sustainable, that is likely to remain over the medium-term.

“The budget that was announced is a single-year settlement again but there is an expectation we will move to multi-year budgets soon, so that will help.”

Alan has also praised the commitment shown by council staff in all departments since the pandemic first emerged, describing it as “remarkable.”

He added: “I am also aware of the impact on our workforce.

“In the coming weeks, I’ll be meeting staff direct and I’m looking forward to working with them to continue to improve how we serve our communities.”

Planning ahead: Work to map out Covid recovery already underway

As the Covid pandemic stretches on towards a third year of disruption, some people will find it difficult to imagine a return to ‘normal.’

However, Alan Russell insists he can see light at the end of the tunnel.

“I firmly believe we will get on top of this,” he said. “We need to plan for coming out of the pandemic and supporting our recovery processes.

“I want to begin to plan how we shift the council’s focus from managing the immediate challenges of the Covid response and back to the strategic agenda and how we move that forward over the coming years so we can hit the ground running.”

Other priorities for Alan include the completion of the £22million transformation of Paisley Town Hall and work to turn the town’s museum into a world-class visitor destination.

He added: “Keeping some of our big projects going has been a big focus and, hopefully, that will be visible to people. They’re important because they are a big contributor to local economic activity but also, once these investments come to fruition, they will have a huge impact on Renfrewshire.”