21st August 2026
There are weeks when the local news seems to consist of a collection of unrelated announcements. A council by-election here, an airport funding decision there, another report about housing, perhaps a development connected with energy or tourism.
But sometimes it is worth stepping back from the individual headlines and asking whether they are actually telling us something bigger.
Looking at what has been happening around Caithness, I think they are.
Caithness may be entering one of those periods when a number of apparently separate changes begin to come together.
The question is whether we are paying enough attention to what is happening beneath the headlines.
Politics is becoming part of the story
The forthcoming by-election in Wick and East Caithness is the most immediate example.
Following the resignation of Councillor Willie Mackay, Highland Council has called an election for the vacant seat in Ward 3. Nominations close on 31 August and, if the election is contested, voters will go to the polls on 1 October.
On the surface, this is simply a local by-election.
But local elections can sometimes provide a useful temperature check on how people are feeling about their area.
What are residents worried about? Housing? Roads? Jobs? Healthcare? Council services? The future of Wick? The decline or regeneration of town centres?
The candidates will inevitably have their own priorities, but the voters will have theirs.
And perhaps the most interesting question will be whether the election becomes a debate about Wick and East Caithness's future, rather than simply a contest for a council seat.
Because there is plenty to debate.
Connectivity remains a fundamental weakness
The decision to continue subsidising flights from Wick is welcome news, but it also demonstrates something rather uncomfortable.
Caithness still needs public money to maintain an air connection with the rest of Scotland.
The Scottish Government has committed almost £1.8 million for the Wick PSO service for the year to August 2027, while Highland Council is contributing more than £600,000, creating a combined package of about £2.4 million. The service now includes flights to Aberdeen and Glasgow.
For Caithness residents this can be viewed as essential infrastructure.
For businesses it is potentially even more important.
A company deciding whether to invest in Caithness needs to know that employees, customers and suppliers can get here.
Someone travelling to hospital needs to know they can get south.
A visitor considering a trip to the far north needs to know that the journey is manageable.
The new Glasgow service is therefore more than an aviation announcement.
It is an attempt to make Caithness better connected to the economic and population centres of Scotland.
But there is an uncomfortable question underneath it.
How long can a service remain viable if it depends heavily on subsidy?
The answer may depend on whether enough people use it.
That means the future of Wick Airport is not simply a government responsibility. It is also a test of whether Caithness businesses, residents and visitors actually make use of the connectivity they have been given.
Housing may become one of the defining issues
Then there is housing.
Highland Council has just reported that almost 8,826 households are on the Highland Housing Register, with demand continuing to exceed supply in many areas. During 2025/26, 1,592 households were housed, but more than half of those properties went to households experiencing homelessness.
These are Highland-wide figures rather than a Caithness total, so we should not pretend they represent the precise situation in Wick or Thurso.
But they illustrate the scale of the problem facing the region.
And housing is not simply a social issue.
It is an economic issue.
A business cannot expand if it cannot find somewhere for new employees to live.
A care provider cannot recruit if potential workers cannot find affordable accommodation.
A young person may decide to leave Caithness because they cannot find a suitable home.
A family may struggle to move here despite having a job offer.
This is why the housing debate needs to move beyond simply asking how many council houses should be built.
The bigger question is whether Caithness has enough homes of the right type and at prices people can actually afford.
Growth creates its own problems
There is an interesting paradox here.
We often talk about the need for Caithness to attract investment, create jobs and grow its population.
But successful growth creates additional demand.
More workers need homes.
More families need schools.
More people need GP appointments and other health services.
More cars use roads.
More waste has to be collected.
More children need places in nurseries and schools.
More businesses need premises.
That means economic development cannot be separated from infrastructure.
If Caithness succeeds in attracting major investment but fails to provide the housing and services needed to support it, some of the economic benefits will simply leak away.
The people who are attracted by the new jobs may find themselves living elsewhere.
That would be a remarkable failure.
The energy opportunity is enormous
And this brings us to perhaps the most important long-term story of all.
Caithness is sitting in the middle of one of Scotland's most ambitious energy transformations.
Dounreay is continuing its long decommissioning journey.
Offshore wind developments are progressing.
The transmission network is being expanded.
New forms of energy technology are being explored.
And the question is gradually changing from "Can Caithness produce energy?" to "How much of the economic value created by that energy can remain in Caithness?"
That is a crucial distinction.
For decades, the far north has been accustomed to seeing major infrastructure projects arrive, employ people for a period and then move on.
The opportunity now is to build something more permanent.
That could mean engineering.
It could mean maintenance.
It could mean specialist manufacturing.
It could mean energy storage.
It could mean digital businesses attracted by increasingly important energy infrastructure.
It could mean training young people locally for jobs which did not exist a generation ago.
But none of this happens automatically.
Caithness has to compete for those opportunities.
There are already signs of a different approach
The £231,407 recently awarded through Highland Council's Community Regeneration Fund to projects around Caithness may seem small compared with the billions involved in energy infrastructure, but it illustrates another important part of the story.
Money is being invested in Wick's riverside, paths, accessibility at Castletown Drill Hall and the future of Wick Golf Club. More than £550,000 remains available in the fund for future projects.
These aren't glamorous megaprojects.
But they matter.
A successful economy is not simply one with factories and offices.
It is somewhere people actually want to live.
Good paths, attractive public spaces, community facilities, sporting opportunities and accessible buildings all contribute to that.
Sometimes economic development begins with making a place a better place to live.
Tourism has an opportunity — but also a challenge
There is another area where Caithness has enormous potential.
Tourism.
The NC500 has undoubtedly brought huge numbers of visitors towards the north, but there remains a danger that Caithness becomes somewhere people travel through rather than stay in.
John O'Groats is an obvious example.
It has become a psychological destination for people driving north.
They reach the top, take photographs, perhaps buy something, and turn around.
But Caithness is much more than a signpost at the end of a road.
There are beaches, castles, brochs, archaeological sites, museums, heritage centres, wildlife, fishing communities and an extraordinary coastline.
There is also the history of the far north, from prehistoric settlement to the Clearances, maritime trade, farming, fishing and the nuclear era at Dounreay.
The opportunity is to persuade visitors that reaching the top of Scotland should not be the end of their journey.
It should be the beginning of their exploration of Caithness.
That could make a significant difference to local businesses.
An extra night in a hotel, an additional meal in a restaurant, another attraction visited, another shop used and another tank of fuel purchased may not sound like much.
Multiply it by tens of thousands of visitors and the economic significance becomes much clearer.
But the public finances cannot be ignored
All of this is happening against a difficult financial background.
Highland Council is expected to provide services across one of Britain's largest and most sparsely populated local authority areas.
That is an expensive undertaking.
Caithness has roads to maintain, communities to support, housing to manage, environmental health services to provide and winter conditions to deal with.
At the same time, local authorities across Scotland are under pressure to find savings and redesign services.
That creates an uncomfortable tension.
Caithness needs investment to grow.
But the council has limited money.
It needs better infrastructure.
But infrastructure costs money.
It needs more housing.
But housing costs money.
It needs services capable of supporting an ageing and changing population.
But those services also cost money.
This is why the region cannot simply wait for government to solve everything.
Local businesses, communities, developers, landowners and public bodies increasingly have to work together.
There is a bigger demographic question
Perhaps the most important issue underneath all of this is population.
Caithness has an enormous amount of physical space.
What it does not have is an unlimited supply of people.
That matters because an economy ultimately depends on people.
People run businesses.
People work in hospitals.
People teach children.
People build houses.
People maintain infrastructure.
People run shops and restaurants.
People provide care.
People pay taxes.
If the population falls or becomes significantly older, maintaining services becomes progressively more difficult.
That is why attracting younger workers and families is not simply a population objective.
It is an economic necessity.
And again, housing and connectivity come straight back into the equation.
Perhaps Caithness needs to stop thinking in individual projects
This is where I think the real opportunity lies.
We tend to discuss developments individually.
The airport is one story.
Dounreay is another.
Offshore wind is another.
Housing is another.
Tourism is another.
Council finances are another.
The by-election is another.
But they are connected.
You cannot have economic growth without people.
You cannot attract people without housing.
You cannot attract businesses without connectivity.
You cannot retain people without services.
You cannot support services without a viable population and economy.
And you cannot turn tourism into long-term economic benefit if visitors simply pass through.
Suddenly, those apparently unrelated stories begin to look like parts of the same puzzle.
Caithness really could be at a turning point
There is no guarantee that the next decade will be better than the last.
Major energy projects can bring enormous opportunities, but they can also bring disappointment.
Population decline can be difficult to reverse.
Public finances can restrict what councils are able to do.
Housing shortages can frustrate economic growth.
Transport links can disappear if passenger numbers are insufficient.
Tourism can generate traffic without generating enough local spending.
None of this is inevitable.
But neither is success.
Caithness is going to have to make the most of what it has.
And perhaps that is the most important point to emerge from this week's news.
The region is not short of opportunities.
It is short of certainty that those opportunities will translate into lasting local prosperity.
That is something worth discussing now, before the decisions are made rather than afterwards.
The question we should be asking
So, is Caithness facing a period of profound change?
I think the evidence suggests that it is.
The question is whether we recognise it early enough.
The Wick and East Caithness by-election gives local people an opportunity to debate what sort of future they want.
The new air service gives businesses and residents another connection to the rest of Scotland.
The housing figures warn that growth cannot happen without somewhere for people to live.
The energy developments could transform the local economy if enough of the value stays here.
Tourism provides an opportunity to turn Caithness from a place people pass through into a place where they stay.
And the continuing pressure on council finances reminds us that none of this can simply be funded indefinitely from the public purse.
There is a bigger Caithness story emerging beneath all those individual headlines.
It is a story about whether a remote part of Scotland can turn its disadvantages — distance, population, weather and limited infrastructure — into advantages in a changing economy.
We have the land.
We have the energy.
We have the coastline.
We have the history.
We have some extraordinary natural assets.
We have people who have demonstrated time and again that they can make things happen.
What we need now is to connect those assets together into a coherent vision.
Because the greatest danger may not be that Caithness changes too much.
It may be that the region changes around us while we are too busy discussing each individual headline to notice that the bigger picture is changing too.