How the Highlands is 'thinking outside the box' to bring services to the people
Council leaders have had to do things differently to bring public services to the projected increase in people moving to the Highlands for work.
It is the largest local authority area in the UK, stretching across a landmass comparable in size to Belgium.
For decades, Highland Council has grappled with the practical consequences of governing such a vast and sparsely populated region — remote communities, fragile infrastructure and some of the poorest roads in Scotland.
The council’s school estate, in particular, has been repeatedly judged as one of the worst in the country. More than a third — 34 per cent — of the school buildings have been rated as poor or bad, with damning inspection reports cataloguing ageing buildings, unsuitable facilities and mounting maintenance problems.
Yet council leaders insist the direction of travel is changing, with a projected increase in jobs and people across a region becoming more often described as a renewable energy powerhouse for the UK.
A landmark agreement was signed this year concluding a five-year planning process to establish Inverness and Cromarty Firth Green Freeport (ICFGF), which is expected to generate more than 11,000 long-term jobs over the next 25 years.
It aims to become a major international hub for the expanding renewable energy sector. Earlier this year, deputy First Minister Kate Forbes launched an initiative to manage up to £100 billion of projected investment in the Highlands and Islands over the next 15 years, driven by renewable energy generation, transmission, and distribution.
The rollout of such developments, which have proved controversial for some communities given the quantity of energy-related applications, means pressure is mounting to ensure community services are fit for purpose.
A key objective has been to develop a network of multi-service community hubs — known as Points of Delivery, or PODs. These are designed to co-locate health, education, leisure and other public services under one roof.
While the policy remains in its early stages, the beginnings of this “hub culture” is already visible, albeit with some teething problems.
In Caithness, the Wick Joint Campus opened in 2017 at a cost of £48.5 million, bringing together Wick High School, Pulteneytown Academy Primary and South Primary into a single integrated site that houses a secondary and a primary school, a leisure centre and a library.
Convenor of the council Bill Lobban said the shift required a fundamental change in thinking of how council services and buildings are used.
“Gone are the days now when one building had a singular purpose,” he said.
“We have to start thinking outside the box. We closed a decrepit primary school and opened a brand-new one that includes the community leisure centre and the public library.
“We built a new football pitch. It means the place becomes the centre of the community.
“That’s what we’re trying to do in the Highlands.
“It’s not just about building a school, it’s about what else you can bring together.”
In Wick, council leaders said they are looking at introducing an NHS consultancy service in the same space where they have Department for Work and Pensions, Social Security Scotland among other council services to prevent people “being bounced about.”
A similar idea is coming together for Thurso, where plans are progressing for a £100 million campus that would combine schools with a wider range of community services including office spaces, health services and council depots.
The council’s chief officer, Finlay MacDonald, said the aim is to simplify access for people.
“We are taking four schools and looking at how we can create a single secondary school alongside a primary,” Mr MacDonald said, as consultations on the development have been taking place this month.
“With the University of the Highlands and Islands campus adjacent, we’re developing a 0-to-65 education corridor, alongside other services.
“We’re looking at a potential NHS consultant space as well.”
Scottish Liberal Democrat councillor for East Wick and Caithness Jan McEwan said there are improvements to be made if places like the Wick campus are going to be a blueprint for elsewhere.
“The current entrance isn’t fit for purpose,” she said. “And the library works a bit like a thoroughfare for people going to the gym so that needs to change.
“To me a library needs to be a quiet space.
“When it was first built, some of the roof also blew off so there have been issues with it that need to be addressed.”
Councillors this month also approved a £50 million investment in Dingwall just north of Inverness, to develop a new community POD. The plans bring together a new St Clement’s Special School and a new Dingwall Primary School onto one site, while ensuring each will retain their own name, staff, management, entrance and facilities.
The hub developments form a central plank of the Highland Investment Plan (HIP), a £2.1 billion programme that will see investment over the next two decades in schools, roads, transport, housing and community facilities.
A total of 17 schools will be replaced under the first phase of HIP plus a newbuild at Tornagrain, near Inverness.
Council leader, Raymond Bremner, said the POD approach has been designed to safeguard community services that might otherwise disappear, such as face-to-face services becoming redundant under digitalisation.
“They are about making services easier to access, allowing partners to work better together and sharing facilities where needs overlap,” he said.
“Otherwise what we have is loads of different buildings by different partners.
“By bringing them all together in a single POD you can actually reduce the cost and protect the service from threat and make it more sustainable.”
The investment plan is being funded through collecting 2 per cent of council tax annually, which started for the first time this year.
Cllr Bremner said reliance on competitive government funding had proved too uncertain.
The council expects the investment to be supported by population growth. Leaders said plans are in place to deliver 24,000 new homes over the next decade, with just under 300 development sites already submitted by private developers that are currently under assessment.
They said they believe the POD model could also stabilise employment across the region.
Recruitment has been restructured so that many posts are now advertised as “Highland-wide”, allowing staff to be based anywhere in the region and work on a hybrid basis.
Mr MacDonald said the hubs could make dual employment more viable and increase the chances of people being able to stay put in their communities.
“If you’re working part-time for the NHS and part-time for the council, you could move between both roles in the same building,” he said.
“You wouldn’t have to commute long distances.”
The revised job structure comes after a report published last year recommended improving work-life balance by supporting flexible and hybrid working to improve recruitment.
The region, as with many other rural areas in Scotland, has been experiencing a brain and talent drain with young people moving away for work.
Mr MacDonald said: “If we want people to relocate here, to bring their families and build their lives in the Highlands, we have to offer first-class facilities that make that choice viable.”
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