How Highland Council's Budget Decisions Expose Some Services More Than Others

29th January 2026

Highland Council faces a set of financial pressures that are both familiar across Scottish local government and uniquely intensified by its geography, population size, and historic investment choices.

While headline debates often focus on council tax rises or total debt levels, the real impact of financial tightening is felt in how different services are protected, redesigned, or reduced over time.

Recent Highland budget decisions show a clear and consistent pattern - statutory services are prioritised, while discretionary and place-based services are increasingly exposed.

Structural Pressures on Highland's Finances

Highland Council operates within a constrained financial framework. Core funding from the Scottish Government has not kept pace with inflation, population ageing, or rising demand for care services.

At the same time, Highland carries a high level of capital debt per head of population, largely arising from long-term investment in schools and infrastructure. While this borrowing is legal and often justified, the annual cost of servicing that debt must be met from the council's revenue budget, reducing flexibility elsewhere.

In response, recent budgets have relied on a combination of council tax increases, service redesign, and multi-year savings plans. A 7 per cent council tax rise was agreed in the most recent budget cycle, alongside plans for further above-inflation increases in coming years. However, council tax can only close a small proportion of the funding gap, meaning difficult choices about spending priorities remain unavoidable.

Protection of Statutory Services

Education and statutory social care continue to be the most protected areas of Highland’s budget. This reflects both legal obligations and political reality. Schools must operate, vulnerable children must be safeguarded, and adults with assessed care needs must receive support. Recent budgets have therefore maintained investment in teaching posts, additional support needs provision, and core social care functions.

However, protection does not mean immunity. In practice, pressures in these areas are managed through indirect measures: tighter eligibility criteria for care, increased reliance on informal carers, reduced classroom support staff, and ongoing reviews of the rural school estate. These changes often have significant impacts at community level, even when overall spending appears stable.

Service Redesign and Centralisation

One of the most consistent features of recent Highland budgets is the emphasis on "service redesign". Savings plans running into tens of millions of pounds over multiple years rely heavily on restructuring, reducing duplication, consolidating buildings, and centralising functions. While these measures are often presented as efficiency improvements rather than cuts, they frequently result in reduced local presence, longer travel distances for service users, and slower response times.

Property rationalisation is a key part of this approach. Maintaining a large number of offices, depots, libraries and community buildings across the largest local authority area in the UK is expensive. As budgets tighten, the council has increasingly looked to close, merge, or transfer facilities to community management. This shifts cost and responsibility away from the council, but also exposes communities with less capacity to greater service loss.

The Most Exposed Services

Recent budget decisions align closely with a pattern seen over many years - non-statutory, preventative, and locally delivered services are the most exposed when finances tighten. Libraries, leisure centres, swimming pools, cultural services, and public toilets are particularly vulnerable. These services are costly to operate, especially in rural areas, and lack the legal protection afforded to education or care.

Public transport support is another area of acute exposure. Where commercial operators withdraw from unprofitable rural routes, the council faces a choice between subsidising services at high cost or allowing routes to disappear. In some cases, Highland has stepped in to run services directly, but this places additional strain on an already stretched revenue budget. Evening, weekend, and remote services are often the first to be reduced.

Roads maintenance illustrates a different but equally significant impact. Rather than visible cuts, Highland has increasingly deferred resurfacing and relied on temporary repairs. Given the size of the road network and harsh weather conditions, this approach leads to gradual deterioration, higher long-term costs, and growing public dissatisfaction.

Unequal Impact Across Communities

A critical feature of Highland’s budget pressures is that equal percentage cuts do not produce equal effects. In urban centres, alternative services and shorter travel distances can cushion the impact. In small and remote communities, the loss of a library, bus service, or local facility can fundamentally alter daily life. This makes financial decisions in Highland particularly politically sensitive and socially consequential.

Mapping recent Highland Council budget decisions against service exposure reveals a clear hierarchy of protection. Statutory services remain the priority, supported by council tax rises and ongoing redesign. Discretionary, community-based, and preventative services bear the greatest risk as the council seeks to balance its books. While none of these decisions occur in isolation, the cumulative effect is a gradual narrowing of the council’s role in everyday local life, particularly in rural areas.

Highland’s experience illustrates a broader challenge facing local government - long-term investment and rising demand are colliding with constrained revenue funding. Without structural change to how councils are funded, the pattern seen in recent Highland budgets is likely to continue, with profound implications for service provision and community resilience.