The Skakagrall

We had a very interesting PowerPoint presentation at our last St Andrew's Day lunch in November. I'm vice-chairman of our local NTS members' centre and the presentation was by the Regional Director in Inverness. Personally I think it sounds a most interesting proposal (although some others take a different view) and, if the presentation walk-through and site graphics are borne out I think the new development will blend in with the landscape very well. The existing centre, whilst good in its day, has really oultived its useful life. I think a major part of the thinking is to provide a more modern interpretation which will appeal to a younger generation of visitors - it's one of the relatively few properties which generates sufficient visitor income to pay for the scale of development that is envisaged, but that income might not continue indefinitely if thay are unable to compete with other visitor attractions in the area; this has become an increasingly important factor in recent years, I understand.

On a much smaller scale they've adopted a similar philosophy at Hugh Miller House and Cottage at Cromarty, which was renovated and re-opened in April 2004. It is now able to cope pretty well with the likely level of visitors, which it definitely was not before.

Employing Appelbaum certainly sounds ambitious. I haven't visited Culloden. Next time I am in the area I must go.

The Scotsman article mentions the doubling in size of Inverness and hence the threat to the battlefield posed by housing development. Why is Inverness expanding so fast, I wonder?

I don't suppose the battlefield itself is in danger from housing development in the next few years, but give it ten to twenty and I think it will certainly require a cordon of land around it to stop it becoming completely engulfed by encroaching suburbia.

I think that the economy in this area is not particularly vibrant, but it has probably seen a large growth in public sector employment of various kinds, which has itself required an expansion of private 'service sector' provision to meet the needs of the expanding local population. There is really only one purely private sector recently-installed business of any importance in Inverness - Inverness Medical (test kits, etc). Almost all the rest, other than house-builders of course, are in one way or another supported directly by public sector finance.

The reasons for the growth of Inverness are, apart from that, probably twofold in the main. The Inverness area has tended to suck in business from the surrounding areas - a lot of people travel quite large distances on a weekly or a monthly basis to do their shopping in Inverness. Apart from people like me (in Nairn, or Dingwall, for example) people come from much more distant places such as Dornoch, Ullapool, Fort William or even Wick to shop. Why? Prices are better, as is choice. Of course, prices are not as good as they are in Aberdeen or even Perth, but that would be a long way to go over the barrier of a wide swathe of sparsely populated land. Highland Region is administratively controlled from Inverness - it is much more centralised than in the days of the old-style counties. With that centralisation of local political power has come, to a limited extent, an 'us and them' situation with Inverness on one side and the rest on the other. However, with a total population of only just over 200,000, the population of Inverness at about 60,000 (probably more now) is very dominant, unless all the rest were completely united, which they can never be becasue it is a very diverse region. I don't see the regional accretion of importance of Inverness being halted any time soon.

That is all very interesting. Whether that kind of economic development is a good thing or not I don't know.

Some time ago I was speculating about whether it would be beneficial to set up new universities in the north to encourage diversification etc. Do you think Inverness could benefit by having a (full-scale) university?

Well, aside from the fact that I don't consider economic development based largely on public sector funding to be particularly sensible or perhaps even durable, I think the fact that the Inverness area is no longer languishing (even if much of the rest of Highland region is) is unequivocally a good thing. In particular the recent significant rise in property prices puts residents of Inverness and surrounds on a more equal footing - no longer are they trapped by low property prices and no longer is it so easy for people to cash-in by coming here from higher-price property areas, without definite and sensible plans in mind.

Whether the area could support a full-scale university is perhaps doubtful. However, there are active steps in that direction, on a more modest scale, by having the colleges of higher education dotted around the region collaborate in an entity called the University of the Highlands & Islands - the website is:
http://www.uhi.ac.uk/ - even something as far south as Perth College is part of the enterprise.

This seems like a more practical route, given the large geographic area with, apart from Inverness itself, relatively few people spread pretty thinly with a few lesser population centres. I'm not sure, though, how active the whole thing is apart from as a theoretical concept.

I was really thinking of a university as a way of bringing in people, skills etc. The existing University of the Highlands & Islands seems to be to serve the existing population.

Thanks for your information.