Ross - Local Government Areas

Local Government Areas

See also Politics of the Highland Council area

The local government county was created under the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1889, which also established elected county councils for all counties in Scotland. The county of Ross and Cromarty was nominally a merger of two older administrative counties, Ross-shire and Cromartyshire, but there were some alterations to boundaries. The alterations became fully effective, for all purposes except parliamentary representation, in 1892.

The county included six burghs: Cromarty, Dingwall, Fortrose, Invergordon, Stornoway and Tain. Dingwall was the county town.

When counties and burghs were abolished as local government areas, in 1975, under the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973, the area of the county was divided between two new areas, the Highland region and the Western Isles, and the Ross and Cromarty district of the region was created as one of eight districts of the new region.

Stornoway and the district of Lewis merged into the Western Isles. Also, the new Ross and Cromarty district excluded two other areas, which merged into other districts of the region. The electoral division of Kincardine was merged into Sutherland, and the South West electoral division (an area around and including Lochalsh) was merged into Skye and Lochalsh.

In 1996, under the Local Government etc (Scotland) Act 1994, the district was abolished and the Highland region was turned into a unitary council area. The new unitary authority, the Highland Council, then adopted the area of the former district as a council management area, and created area committees to represent it. The management area consisted then of 13 wards, each electing one councillor by the first past the post system of election. The council as a whole had 72 members.

Ward boundaries were altered in 1999, to create 80 new wards, but management area boundaries were unaltered. Therefore area committees ceased to represent exactly the areas for which they were named and made decisions. 18 wards and, therefore, 18 councillors were related to the Ross and Cromarty management area.

Under the Local Governance (Scotland) Act 2004, ward boundaries changed again this year, 2007. Also, the eight management areas were abolished in favour of three new corporate management areas. The Ross and Cromarty area was divided between the Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross area and the Ross, Skye and Lochaber area.