Geography
The area was created as a two-tier region in 1975, under the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973, with an elected council for the whole region and, in addition, elected councils for each of eight districts, Badenoch and Strathspey, Caithness, Inverness, Lochaber, Nairn, Ross and Cromarty, Skye and Lochalsh and Sutherland. The act also abolished county and burgh councils. In 1996, under the Local Government etc (Scotland) Act 1994, the Highland Regional Council and the district councils were wound up and their functions were transferred to a new Highland Council. The Highland Council adopted the districts as management areas and created area committees to represent them. However, the boundaries of committee areas ceased to be aligned exactly with those of management areas as a result of changes to ward boundaries in 1999. Ward boundaries changed again in 2007, and the management areas and related committees have now been abolished in favour of three new corporate management areas, Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross; Inverness, Nairn and Badenoch and Strathspey; and Ross, Skye and Lochaber. The names of these areas are also names of constituencies, but boundaries are different.
To many people within the area, using the name Highland as a noun sounds wrong. Dingwall in Highland, for example, sounds strange and is not idiomatic usage. To refer specifically to the area covered by the council, people tend to say the Highland Council area or the Highland area or the Highland region. Otherwise they tend to use the traditional county names, such as Ross-shire. Highlands sometimes refers to the Highland council area (as in Highlands and Islands Fire and Rescue Service). More usually, however, it refers to a somewhat larger or overlapping area. Northern (as in Northern Constabulary) is also used to refer to the area covered by the Highlands and Islands Fire and Rescue Service (which includes the island council areas of Orkney, Shetland and Na h-Eileanan Siar (Western Isles).
The Highland Council headquarters is located in Inverness with most previous district council offices retained as outstations.
Read more about this topic: Highland (council Area)
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—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
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