23rd March 2026
In recent years, anyone paying close attention to Highland Council papers will have noticed a subtle but telling change. A decade ago, the council would publish clear, unambiguous tables showing exactly how many posts were being cut, which departments were affected, and what the implications were for services.
Today, that level of transparency has quietly disappeared. Instead of job‑cut numbers, we now see phrases like "vacancy management", "workforce redesign", and "service transformation". These terms are presented as neutral, even positive, but they mask a deeper truth that the public sector in the Highlands is shrinking, and it is doing so quietly.
The disappearance of explicit job‑cut data is not an oversight. It reflects a shift in how the council manages its financial pressures. Rather than announcing redundancies or formal reductions in staffing, the council simply stops filling posts when people retire or move on.
A planning officer leaves and the vacancy is "held". A social worker resigns and the post is "under review". A roads team loses two members and recruitment is "paused". On paper, nothing is cut. In reality, the workforce is thinning out year by year, and the public feels the consequences in slower responses, longer waits, and services stretched to their limits.
This quiet contraction is not confined to the council. NHS Highland is following the same pattern, particularly in areas like dentistry. For decades, patients were told to attend check‑ups every six months. Now many are being informed that annual appointments are "clinically appropriate".
The official explanation is framed as modern, evidence‑based practice, but the underlying reason is far more prosaic: there simply aren't enough NHS dentists to maintain the old standard. Practices are closing their NHS lists, recruitment is failing in rural areas, and the remaining dentists are overloaded.
Rather than admit that the system cannot cope, the service standard is quietly lowered. What was once a six‑month expectation becomes a twelve‑month compromise, and the public is left to adjust.
Both Highland Council and NHS Highland are caught in the same structural bind. They face rising demand, ageing populations, vast geography, and the high cost of delivering services across a region the size of Belgium. At the same time, their budgets are tightening in real terms.
The Scottish Government has protected its national programmes such as free tuition, free prescriptions, the Scottish Child Payment but this protection pushes the squeeze downward onto councils and health boards. These bodies cannot borrow for day‑to‑day spending, cannot run deficits, and have limited ability to raise revenue. When the block grant tightens, they have only a handful of tools left such as freeze recruitment, stretch staff, delay repairs, and quietly reduce service levels.
This is why vacancy management has become the dominant strategy. It is the least politically painful way to manage decline. No headlines about job losses. No public consultations about cuts. No protests outside council buildings. Just a slow, almost invisible erosion of capacity. But while the method is quiet, the effects are not. Roads take longer to repair. Planning decisions take longer to process. Social care assessments are delayed. Buildings deteriorate. Libraries reduce hours. And in the NHS, waiting lists grow, clinics centralise, and routine care becomes less routine.
The council's recent decision to invest between £500,000 and £1 million in "mobile service delivery" is another sign of the direction of travel. Mobile units are not an addition to the existing estate; they are a precursor to reducing it.
Councils do not spend that kind of money on vans unless they are preparing to withdraw from fixed offices. Maintaining dozens of small buildings across the Highlands is expensive, and with a £65.6 million budget gap this year and £113 million over three years, the council cannot sustain its current footprint. Mobile services are cheaper, more flexible, and politically easier to introduce than announcing office closures outright.
The council has not said that buildings will close, but the logic is unavoidable. The shift is coming; it is simply not being spelled out.
None of this is about blaming local officials. The pressures they face are real, structural, and largely driven by decisions made far above their level. The funding model for rural Scotland has not kept pace with the realities of distance, sparsity, and demographic change.
Councils and health boards are legally required to balance their books, even when the numbers no longer add up. They are trying to manage an impossible equation with the tools available to them. But what is missing and what communities increasingly resent is honesty. People can handle difficult news. What they struggle with is being left to infer the truth from euphemisms and omissions.
The Highlands is entering a period of long‑term contraction in public services. Over the next three to five years, the workforce will continue to shrink through attrition. Waiting times will lengthen. More services will centralise in Inverness.
More buildings will close or be sold. Maintenance backlogs will grow. And both the council and NHS Highland will rely increasingly on mobile units, digital access, and community volunteers to fill the gaps. This is not a temporary storm; it is the new climate.
The public deserves to hear this plainly. Not as a crisis, not as a failure, but as the reality of a system under strain. If Highland Council and NHS Highland were to say openly, "We cannot sustain the current level of services with the resources we have," they would find that most people already know it.
What they want is clarity, not comfort. They want to understand what is happening, why it is happening, and what the future will look like. They want to be treated as adults.
The quiet unravelling of public services in the Highlands is not the fault of any one institution. But the silence around it like the reluctance to name what is happening risks eroding trust.
A more honest conversation would not solve the financial pressures, but it would at least give communities the respect of being told the truth. And in a region as resilient and clear‑eyed as the Highlands, that honesty would go a long way.
Highland Council Press Release 20 March 2026
Members of the Corporate Resources Committee have welcomed a progress update report on the Council's Future Operating Model (FOM), including confirmation of an additional £500,000 investment.
At the meeting, members also agreed the Programme's next steps as it moves further into delivery.
In 2025, the Council gave its backing to the FOM and approved £500,000 in recurring revenue funding to support delivery, including demonstrator sites and early projects. Earlier this month, a further £500,000 investment was agreed to help progress the Programme, supporting the development of a mobile service delivery unit and key staff roles focused on internal and external engagement.
The additional investment will specifically provide an opportunity to implement a mobile service delivery unit, which will seek to:
• Increase access to essential support by offering face to face help with housing, council tax, benefits, and welfare checks without requiring long travel;
• Strengthen prevention and early intervention by spotting issues such as financial hardship or risk of homelessness earlier and connecting people quickly to the right support; and
• Reduce inequalities by tackling digital exclusion and other barriers faced by vulnerable groups through consistent, local, and accessible service delivery.
At its heart, the FOM is about working together in partnership with other public organisations to make services accessible, efficient and equitable for our whole community. The model brings together new ways of working, improved use of assets and strengthened collaboration both internally and with public and third‑sector partners.
The Programme will mark a major step forward in transforming how the Council delivers services across the region and will deliver future efficiencies to support the Council's ongoing commitment to financial sustainability.
Members were also pleased to note that work is now well underway to recruit the specialist roles needed to support the Programme's next phase, including posts focused on internal and external engagement.
With investment secured and the delivery phase now fully activated, the Programme is positioned to make meaningful progress in transforming how services are delivered across Highland communities.
The full update report presented to members is available to view here: https://www.highland.gov.uk/download/meetings/id/86591/13.%2520Future%2520Operating%2520Model
Pdf 40 Pages
The meeting was webcast and you can still view the topic
Future Operating Model Programme 19 Mach 2026
https://highland.public-i.tv/core/portal/webcast_interactive/981290
Click to Item 13.