In danger of decline?

"The Highland Council has identified many parts of its area as “fragile”. These “fragile areas” are areas where there is a risk that the local communities may not be strong enough to survive. Fragile areas are defined as communities ‘being in decline or in danger of decline’ as a result of certain fragility indicators, which are unemployment, population decline and accessibility. This also serves as an accessibility index, as the indicator includes calculation of the proximity of the population to key services, Post Office, School, Food Shop, GP surgery and Petrol Station, measuring the proportion more than 20 mins drive away; and the numbers more than 1.5 hrs from the main town/city.

Furthermore, the Highland Council delivers services across an area with the lowest population density of all UK local authorities. Overall, Highland has only 8 people per square kilometre, falling to 2 per square kilometre in Sutherland, compared with 66 people per square kilometre in Scotland as a whole. Front line services are decentralised for effective delivery, and it is believed additional costs of some £12m per annum are incurred in delivering services to the 26% of the population who live in "supersparse" areas1. This is not recognised in Grant Aided Expenditure (GAE) funding. Many of our remote communities are in danger of decline as the population ages and young people move to major centres such as Inverness in search of further education, or more secure and better paid employment.

In very strong contrast with the rural locations, there has been high population growth in Inverness itself and along the Inverness – Nairn corridor (A96). This pattern is likely to continue as further land is identified for development, and endorsed in the development plan process. During the last 30 years the Inverness city region population has grown by almost 32,000, with the expectation that a further 30,000 people will be housed in the corridor over the next 30 plus years."

Surely this goes to the very heart of the debate in terms of any new plans for the HIE area. APTSec is currently reading about 'Supersparsity ', also, 'Grant Aided Expenditure' and 'Recurrent Revenue' .

[Extracts: sections 2.10, 2.12 and 2.13 of the draft Local Transport Strategy for the Highlands - September 2009]