A Christmas message from Chief Executive, Laurence Rockey

It’s tempting to think of the period before the Christmas break as a time for winding down but I know that the opposite is true across all of our teams at East Lothian Council!

In the last week alone, I’ve had the privilege of vising some of our primary schools including Longniddry and Ormiston and it was really heart-warming to see at first hand the excitement our children are feeling about the Christmas period and the lengths our teachers and school staff are going to making it as special a time of year as possible. I even helped serve (and eat) a delicious lunch at Longniddry - although there was no turkey on offer the day that I visited, that’s definitely not a complaint as the food was really nutritious and tasty!

On the subject of supporting our young people and families, a visit to Olivebank was truly inspiring, to see the passion and expertise of our team there who work with children and families from pregnancy through to age two. You can find out more about the outstanding work they do on our website.

I’ve also found time to continue my series of visits to local businesses and employers and the most recent was a fascinating trip to the Tarmac plant at Dunbar, which is a really important employer in East Lothian and an essential industry. It was great to hear from the Plant Manager about their future plans. The visit provided valuable insight into their operations and upcoming developments, including their commitment to sustainability. Tarmac continues to invest in innovative processes to reduce carbon emissions and improve energy efficiency, ensuring that cement production supports both economic growth and environmental responsibility.

Getting back to future plans here, I’d like to extend a special ‘thank you’ to everyone who has been involved in getting the parking management proposals to Council last week. It has been an enormous piece of work from the consultations and meetings to liaising with external experts to help pull together the draft schemes for our main towns, to getting the full and detailed reports ready for scrutiny and answering some, at times, challenging questions. It has not been an easy project and the approval at Council on Tuesday certainly doesn’t mark the end of this major piece of work. I look forward to liaising with the team in the new year when the first implementation will take place in North Berwick.

This is just one piece of work that illustrates what I mentioned earlier about all the hard work that is constantly happening right across our council. I do hope that all of you get to spend some quality time with family and friends and that you relax and enjoy the festivities when you can. And a shout out to those who will be working to keep our essential support and services running throughout the festive season to keep our communities safe and well.

Thank you to everyone across our council for all your dedication throughout 2025 and I look forward to meeting more of you in person in 2026. My best wishes to all of you.

You can see more updates in my vlog which will continue up to the Christmas break and resume early in the New Year.