Highland Council has announced what it refers to as the rollout of additional bins as part of its commitment to improve and support sustainable tourism in the area.
The plans for the current year include providing aesthetically designed waste enclosures to improve the look of waste facilities at various sites including Ullapool Latheron Lane and Gairloch Harbour.
Among places listed also as receiving additional large bins are Gairloch Harbour, Rogie Falls, Little Gruinard Bay Car Park and Kylesku Bridge (East) car park. The bin design incorporates a reduced opening which will protect waste on windy days and prevent instances of fly tipping. Sites were selected based upon intelligence gathered during previous tourism seasons by multi-disciplinary teams across the Council.
A new report aiming to tackle what it refers to as chronic depopulation in the Highlands has revealed that the average house price in Coigach is over £70,000 higher than the average for the Highland region while over a quarter of dwellings in Coigach are classed as vacant or second homes compared to a Highland wide figure of six per cent.
The report calls for changes in the way rural policy is developed with repopulation becoming a central issue and how rural mainland areas are treated in national policy as they face many of the same challenges as island communities. It says that many residents struggle to access basic services like childcare, healthcare, housing and education, making it harder for young people to remain in the area and for families or workers to move in, issues which are beyond redress by local action alone.
A report on the use of Scottish airports by private jets has recorded Inverness as the third busiest for private jets in 2024 behind Edinburgh and Glasgow Prestwick. A total of over 12,100 private jet flights were recorded taking off or landing at Scottish airports in 2024.
The report has been produced by Oxfam which says the data reinforces the need for there to be a fair tax on passengers who chose to travel by private jet. Last year it was reported that private jets owned by Scotland’s largest private landowner, Danish billionaire Anders Holch Povlsen, were contributing to the high levels of private jet traffic at Inverness.
Oxfam Scotland says that if Air Departure Tax was in place instead of Air Passenger Duty, it could have raised £28.8m in revenue for the Scottish government.
