7th June 2026
If you want to understand the future of the Thurso schools project, you don’t need to look at Edinburgh’s spreadsheets or Holyrood’s deficit forecasts. You only need to walk down Wick High Street.
Because Wick’s town centre regeneration — a modest £2 million scheme — is the perfect illustration of how long it takes for even the smallest capital project in the Highlands to move from poster boards to pavement. The project was first mooted six or seven years ago, complete with glossy visuals pinned to the walls of the council offices. It sat on the “to‑do list” for years, drifting through consultations, redesigns, funding bids and political cycles.
Only now, half a decade later, is it finally being delivered — and crucially, not with Highland Council money, but with external funding from elsewhere. Even then, it is a tiny project by national standards. Two million pounds is the cost of resurfacing a single urban junction in Glasgow. In Caithness, it takes half a decade.
If £2 million takes six or seven years, what does that imply for £100 million?
This is the Highland pattern.
Small projects take years.
Medium projects take decades.
Large projects take… well, look at the Wick and Thurso health hubs.
Those hubs — fully designed, widely consulted, politically endorsed — have now been pushed into the 2030s because the Scottish Government’s capital budget has collapsed under the weight of a £5 billion deficit. Anything without a spade in the ground has been frozen. Wick and Thurso fall squarely into that category.
And now, into this financial storm, Highland Council has launched its six‑week consultation on the £100 million Thurso schools project. The consultation contains everything except the two things that matter: a start date and an opening date. Their absence is not an oversight. It is a signal — the same signal that preceded the health hub delays, and the same signal that kept Wick town centre on ice for years.
A project without dates is a project without funding.
Highland Council cannot build a £100 million school on its own. It is already one of the most indebted councils in Scotland. Rising interest rates have made borrowing more expensive than at any point in the last decade. Construction inflation has pushed the cost of materials, labour and energy to record levels. Every month of delay adds millions to the final bill.
The only route to funding is LEIP, the Learning Estate Investment Programme. But LEIP Phase 4 has not been announced. And a Scottish Government running a £5 billion deficit is in no position to launch a generous new capital programme.
This is why the Thurso consultation contains no timeline. The Council cannot commit to dates because the Scottish Government cannot commit to money.
And this is where Wick’s experience becomes the cautionary tale.
Yes — Wick’s new school campus was delivered, and it opened in 2018. But it spent more than a decade on Highland Council’s capital “needs list” before a single brick was laid. It survived multiple rounds of cuts, re‑profiling, redesign and political hesitation. It was promised, postponed, revived, delayed, and only eventually built because the funding climate briefly aligned with political will.
Wick’s campus is proof that projects can be delivered — but only after years of drift, uncertainty and financial roulette.
And that was during a period when the Scottish Government’s capital budget was far healthier than it is today.
Now compare that with the Wick town centre project:
£2 million, externally funded, and still took six or seven years.
Compare it with the health hubs:
£80 million combined, fully designed, and now delayed to 2030.
Compare it with Thurso High:
£100 million, unfunded, and dependent on a capital programme that currently doesn’t exist.
The pattern is unmistakable.
The Highlands does not get projects delivered quickly.
It gets consultations, drawings, promises — and then long, grinding waits.
And so we arrive at the only conclusion that fits the facts.
If a £2 million town centre project takes six or seven years…
If a £80 million health hub project is pushed into the 2030s…
If a £100 million school project has no dates, no funding and no certainty…
…then the Thurso schools project is not simply “at risk of delay”.
It is already in the same queue, waiting for the same money, trapped in the same financial weather system.
Or, to put it more sharply:
If Wick town centre is the warm‑up act, and the health hubs are the dress rehearsal, the Thurso school project is about to discover that the main performance has been postponed due to “budgetary pressures” — but the audience is still expected to applaud.