Larkhall residents can vote for a new Councillor to represent us on Thursday 9 July 2026.
Larkhall Plan Partnership created a manifesto based on what residents told us matters to them in our surveys. We sent this manifesto to the four by-election candidates and invited them to chat about the key points from the manifesto as well as their ambitions and commitments if elected.
Leigh Payne is the SNP candidate.
Will you work cross party for the benefit of Larkhall residents?
I think that when you are in the Council, you should be working across the parties, not as individuals, working across parties for the communities that you’re going to be representing.
Because if you have someone that’s against it, that might be a genuine concern for people, but work together to get it sorted. Don’t go
against other people, just find out what the issues are and work across because it’s the community that’s important.
Do you support an open spaces strategy to improve our green spaces?
One million percent because I’ll tell you for mental health, the best thing you can do is be outside. But sometimes even when you’re going out for a walk in Chatelherault I would like to know (or any of the green spaces) I would like to know what it was used for before.
How can you bring more people out to walk and be out in nature because it is the thing that helps mental health, physical health. And if you’re getting a bit of history about that, I think that is the most innovative thing I’ve heard and I think that’s something that communities would really buy into as well from teaching kids and then for older people who have maybe not been in that area for a while.
If they can go and learn about the history of it or how many things, how many steps they’ve done, it will help with their mental and physical health definitely I think it’s a great idea.
Will you support our community action plan created based on responses from our surveys?
I think communities are much more driven now to give their support to community organisations. When you’re asking the people, that is the most important thing because they know what they want in their community: they know what struggles they’ve got, which a lot of them, a lot of people are really struggling at the moment, including my family.
I think if you’re asking them what they need from the ground up, if you’re asking them how they can enhance their experience and you’re delivering for them, that is the most amazing thing that you can do. I think that is well worth everybody’s investment.
Do you support upgrading our running track?
I think anything where you’re going to have to bus people out isn’t a good idea. If you’ve got to have to bus, if communities have got to bus people out of their own community to have experiences, that’s not a good thing.
I know that running is really important for mental and physical health from children to adults to older people who would use that kind of facility. I think that if you’re going to invest in that and that’s what the community have asked for, they shouldn’t have to bus people out. Use it in your own community.
That is a brilliant, inventive way to change things for the better of Larkhall because it’s not about bussing people out, not about taking people out of your community, have it in your community.
Will you support Larkhall’s small businesses?
Absolutely, because I’ve had my own business. I know that when I come down to Larkhall or when I’m here, it’s all independent shops that are here. If you didn’t have those independent shops, you wouldn’t have that high street that Larkhall got, which is amazing. People come here for that and even when I’m looking on social media, a lot of the places that post on social media have visitors coming from other areas but that is something that I think could be used more because those small businesses are what drives communities.
If they didn’t have them, where would you shop? You would have to leave Larkhall, you would have to be out in a different environment. If you didn’t have those kinds of businesses, that is what drives the communities. We need to make sure that those businesses stay there. They’ve got the incentives to stay there and we get visitors too as a result of the businesses that are here.
Do you support our employability programme to help people take steps into work?
I’ve worked in many areas from being in the NHS and being in private companies and one of the things I used to do was employability. I worked in East Kilbride for a wee bit when I was taking breaks from my job and it was under the employment enterprise before a lot of these companies were shut down.
It was looking at the hope and looking at where people were and at what part when they started with us and then what they did at the end. So making sure that they got help, they got CVs, that we spoke to companies, that we showed them life skills that were relevant to work; time management, being appropriately dressed, presented.
I think when you’ve not been working for a while, you need all the help and support that you can get and employability is really important because it gives that. People do want to work, they do want to get out of their environment and they do want to make a difference. But where do they start? And sometimes it’s really difficult to get that confidence.
Having an employability programme would help all that before they even leave the doorstep they’ve got all of that there that they can be looked after: confidence building, how do they even go into interviews, what kind of things do they need to learn from an interview process. If you start doing that with people that word of mouth will spread, people will use it a lot more because they do want to be working – people don’t want to be sitting in their houses doing nothing.
If we can help, and you can help them, to get that experience before they leave their house, that’s going to be an amazing thing for people to experience. And you’ll find that those people might want to work in their communities as well so that’s only going to be win-win for everybody. So I think employability is really important
Do you support sustainable funding for the third sector?
That could life shattering for someone to lose that attention that they’re getting. Community groups are so essential. It doesn’t matter where you live, community groups are so essential because if the Council can’t do it or other people can’t do it communities strive on community groups.
We need to make sure that those community groups are successful, that they are getting the funding they need, and you need to make sure that they are getting the help that they need from any walks of life that can can help them stay afloat because they are essential to the community that they live and work in. They’re essential for that – I need to make sure that you guys stay open no matter what happens.
Work in partnerships, work as a team because people don’t want to go particularly to big organisations to get the help. They would rather come to the people that know them, live in the community, the people that know what they’re going through, what they’re experiencing. They would rather come here than go to a big company to get that help. And again, that is from the ground up. It’s the people who live here are the people that run the community groups, so they understand and that is very important.
Do you support local businesses partnering with Larkhall Academy to create opportunities for pupils?
That is a great thing because the kids that are working there can maybe not all just shop or use those services if it’s businesses, but what you could also do is learn. Work experience used to be a thing, it’s not, there’s no work experience anymore. So if they’re building those partnerships, kids could go there to work or learn and there’s a lot of kids that could teach businesses stuff.
So that partnership that the education and Larkhall Academy is building up local business why would you change that? Because we should be doing it more, not less. Make sure that they’re learning, the skills that they’re learning, the experiences that they’re having because it’s difficult moving from school to a work environment. If they’ve got businesses to come in and talk to them, help them, that will make the kids feel more confident when they leave school.
But I also appreciate that it’s difficult for educators because they want to teach so many things. I learned everything that I did at school. Everything that I learned, I learned at school and I think that maybe sometimes it’s not just about the school environment, but it’s about the outer environment, and if Larkhall Academy are working with local business, that’s only going to be good for Larkhall Academy and local businesses. We can all learn from each other. We can all work with each other and make it a success.
Is there anything else you want to add about Larkhall or the manifesto?
I can’t change anything – I can complain and I can be moaning about things – but I can’t change it unless I’m involved in it. I’ve lived in Larkhall and Stonehouse; I’ve been here, I use the facilities here, I use the businesses here, I use the health center here, the leisure center here. So I use everything and I don’t want to lose that, but there are things that could get better and there are things that we could definitely change to make it better for people. But I can’t do it if I was sitting at home and complaining about it. I need to be here working with partners, working with communities, with community groups, with businesses so that we can make it better for everybody.
There’s no point being on the outside and looking in and trying to change it. You need to be involved in it to make sure that things happen and things do get done. So I’m hoping, I hope that I can do as much for Larkhall and should I be successful I will definitely be here because you’re my passion – you the community is my passion – and that’s why I want to make such a big difference.