Graham Hope: Last News

Changes to the school day, Christmas lights, staff reductions and cuts at recycling centres are all on the table for when it comes to West Lothian Council’s money saving measures.

A consultation on the future priorities of local services has been launched in West Lothian.

The first Liberal Democrat councillor to take up a seat on West Lothian Council has said she is looking forward to fighting for local residents.

Sign up to the weekly West Lothian Courier newsletter for the latest West Lothian news and sport.The Courier can reveal that West Lothian Council’s annual wage bill is over £200 million pounds.We sent a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to the council and discovered that the wage bill for the last year, from November 2019 to November 2020, was £223,048,471.It also showed that the annual council salaries had increased by over £5 million from the previous year, November 2018 to November 2019, when the wage bill was £217,618,123,This represents a wage hike of £5,430,348 in the past year.The FOI asked the council to reveal their 10 highest-paid employees.The Courier discovered that chief executive, Graham Hope, had an annual salary of

Sign up to the weekly West Lothian Courier newsletter for the latest West Lothian news and sport.Whitburn Academy has been congratulated on its success in topping a new national awards project.Councillor David Dodds raised a motion before a meeting of the full West Lothian Council paying tribute to the school on its winning of the Reading Schools Gold level award.Cross-party support agreed to ask the chief executive Graham Hope to write to the school’s head teacher,  Tracey Loudon, congratulating her on the school’s achievement.Councillor Dodds, the executive councillor for education, said the award reflected the drive and determination to embed a reading culture at the school.His motion added: “This follows hard of the heels of Whitburn

West Lothian Council bosses have thanked the public for their patience and understanding during the coronavirus crisis and heaped praise on staff.