A New Year message from Council Leader Marie Burns

As we prepare to welcome 2026, it’s important for us to recognise that 2025 was a difficult year as many residents in our communities continued to face the impact of the Cost-of-living Crisis in their day-to-day lives.

Costs connected to everything from transport and childcare to food and household bills still present barriers to many people who are trying hard to live the best life they can.

Reducing child poverty remains a top priority for me – as Leader of the Council – and for the Council as a whole and although we have made some progress there is still a lot of work to be done.

In summer, child poverty data for all UK local authorities was released by the End Child Poverty coalition. This showed that levels of child poverty here in North Ayrshire had fallen by almost five per cent.

While this is a step in the right direction, we need to do more to help struggling families. And we will continue working with partner organisations across our communities to address inequalities.

One of the ways that we are helping to create a resilient local economy is through Community Wealth Building.

This is an economic model that sees wealth being retained locally thanks to local authorities and partners increasing employment and using local produce and resources at every suitable opportunity.

The Council is leading the way when it comes to Community Wealth Building in Scotland. In recent months, we have engaged closely with the Scottish Government on the progression of the Community Wealth Building (Scotland) Bill and we also hosted the Convention of the Highlands and Islands on Arran – with Community Wealth Building top of the agenda.

In October, we welcomed Ivan McKee MSP, Minister for Public Finance, to Lochshore Community Hub in Beith to give him an overview of our approach, and earlier in the year a delegation from South Korea visited the Council to hear about the work we do to ensure local communities feel the benefits of CWB.

The Ayrshire Growth Deal CWB Programme concluded in early 2025 - and this supported more than 1100 enterprises throughout Ayrshire.

Where appropriate, we have involved community groups and local businesses in the process to share their experiences of CWB to demonstrate to others how it has a positive impact when it comes to circulating wealth locally.

Going forward, we will embed CWB in every aspect of the Council’s strategies and policies – with the aim of retaining local wealth.

We are also one of three Scottish local authorities involved in the Collaboration for Health Equity in Scotland.

This ongoing work sees Council officers working with experts, and with our communities, on ways to reduce health inequalities and increase healthy life expectancy for residents here in North Ayrshire.

We recently switched on our two solar PV farm at Nethermains, between Irvine and Kilwinning, and at Shewalton in Irvine, and I am proud to say we are the first Scottish local authority to own and operate this type of facility.

Completing both projects is a major milestone in our efforts to generate clean power, cut carbon emissions and meet our net-zero targets.

In October, the Account’s Commission, which is the public sector watchdog, praised our approach to improving services and reducing poverty.

Its five-yearly Best Value report used information from different audits, finding that the Council is doing well when it comes to change and innovation and is strong on partnership working and engaging with our communities.

This is testament to all of the hard work that is being done by Council colleagues, our partners and our communities to make life better for residents.

I look forward to working together with our communities throughout 2026, and I wish all residents of North Ayrshire a prosperous and peaceful New Year.

Published: 18 December 2025