COUNCILLOR Gary Womersley is stepping down from his role as leader of Clackmannanshire Council.

After nearly three years in the position, he will hand over the baton to councillor Les Sharp next week as he looks towards his legal and senior management careers.

He will remain as a councillor for Clackmannanshire Central and being leader is an experience he has found positive, but believes now is the time for someone new to step in and keep the momentum for positive change going.

He explained: “In fairness to the group, in fairness to the council, there are certain points in time. There was the referendum, there’s a lot of work going to start with the budget, local government is changing, there’s health and social care integration, social services and all those things are now going to grow and require to evolve and be dealt with and so on and rather than me start the process, or a lot of these processes, and then hand over some quite chunky, clunky items to someone else, it was as well going to someone who could be involved from the start. I’ll still be there as a councillor, I’ll still be helping in the background.

“Probably it was the timing that was right for the group and right for the council. I could’ve stayed on but I’ve always treated it as a full-time job. It has been nine to nine, reading documents at the weekend, and I don’t know if I would have been able to commit to that going forward and that wouldn’t have been fair on the group, it wouldn’t have been fair on the council, it wouldn’t have been fair on Clackmannanshire residents.” Since becoming leader in January 2012 there have been various highlights for Gary, both at a ward and county-wide level, and he has enjoyed trying to show that things can be done differently.

He said: “My whole point of being a councillor in the first place was there had been a dispersal order in Sauchie Main Street, it was only one of the three, four places in Scotland there had been a dispersal order. Sauchie isn’t the third, fourth worst place in Scotland to live but I wasn’t seeing things coming through and not just from a Sauchie, but from a Clackmannanshire perspective. We’ve made things happen in probably the most challenging times.” His time in the position has been “extremely positive” and he is confident Les will continue working for change.

He said: “I grew up in Branshill Park in Sauchie, I grew up in Pompee Road, I went to Craigbank School, I went to Lornshill School, I did my legal trainee-ship with the council, I never would have thought that I would’ve been council leader, I never even thought I’d be a councillor back then if you’d asked me. So just the way that people have responded positively and been so nice and accommodating in that role, that’s been positive and something I will always take satisfaction from.”