A FORMER Gourock councillor who is standing in the town’s upcoming by-election has vowed to fight for an ‘Inverclyde winter fuel payment’ and a council tax reduction if he wins next month’s poll.

Chris McEleny served as an elected member for Gourock between 2012 and 2022, initially as an SNP councillor before he quit the party to join Alex Salmond’s Alba Party in 2021.

The Alba Party candidate says that while he was content to leave local government behind following his loss in the 2022 council election, events since have motivated him to stand again.

Mr McEleny will be back on the stump this weekend after suspending his campaign following Mr Salmond's death and the arrival of the former First Minister's body in Scotland yesterday.

Find out how to vote in Gourock by-election later this year

He told the Telegraph: “Two major things have happened, at the start of this year Inverclyde Council agreed to raise council tax by 8.2 per cent with a planning assumption to raise it further in the coming year.

“I don’t like using the word madness, but I’ve never seen a madder policy. The most deprived local authority in Scotland and the council administration wanted to give us the second highest level of council tax in Scotland.

“It was totally bizarre and out of touch with the reality of many younger mortgaged families and younger people having to pay private rents who were struggling to make ends meet.”

Inverclyde Council initially voted to increase the council before coming to an agreement through negotiations with the Scottish Government earlier this year which saw a rebate issued to locals.

Mr McEleny added: “People might think their council tax freeze was frozen last year. It wasn’t. The status quo as we go into next year will be that 8.2 per cent increase.

“What I’m pledging in this by-election is that if elected I’ll move that council tax is cut by five per cent.

“Not only will people Gourock benefit but everyone in Inverclyde will benefit from the five per cent council tax cut if I’m elected.”

As well as cutting council tax, Mr McEleny says he also has a ‘fully costed’ plan to mitigate cuts to the winter fuel payment, which will see all but the poorest pensioners miss out on the cash.  

He said: “Labour swept the country in July promising change, but the first thing they did was decide to drop the axe on 12,500 pensioners across Inverclyde.

“A few thousand of them living here in Gourock are going to lose up to £300 in their winter fuel payment.

“I think it’s one of the worst policy decisions I’ve ever seen in 20-plus years of being active in Scottish politics.

“It took the SNP six years to lose the trust of the people of Scotland from a position they’d built it up to, it’s taken the new Labour government six weeks to lose the trust of the people of Scotland.”

The Alba Party man believes that the Scottish Government should have ‘gone further’ to oppose the winter fuel payment cutbacks, by mitigating it and challenging it in court.

He told the Tele: “If we don’t win a court case and we can’t force the UK and the Scottish Governments to actually step in and reverse their decision, then the Labour administration who offered people change just a few months ago should be held to account.

“We should have an Inverclyde winter fuel payment of around £150 for everyone that’s missing out.

“They’ll need my vote if I get in for a budget, because they’ll have lost a Labour councillor and they can’t rely on the support of the SNP or the independents.

“They’ll get my vote, if they cut council tax by five per cent and make sure the funding is there for an Inverclyde winter fuel payment.”