Submitted by Bill Fernie
31st August 2026
There are weeks when local news seems to consist of a collection of unrelated announcements. A school report here, a council decision there, perhaps a sporting success or a community project.
Then there are weeks when, if you stand back and look at the stories together, a rather different picture begins to emerge.
This has been one of those weeks for Caithness.
From a potential £100 million investment in Thurso's schools to concerns about the performance of a small rural primary school, from a proposed Highland visitor levy to the Wick and East Caithness by-election, the stories of the past seven days tell us something about where Caithness finds itself in 2026.
It is a county with considerable opportunities ahead, but also one having to deal with some very familiar problems.
A possible £100 million investment in Thurso
The biggest long-term story is undoubtedly the proposal to invest up to £100 million in a new education campus in Thurso.
Highland Council has now opened another public consultation, inviting parents, pupils, school staff and the wider community to comment on proposals for the future of the Thurso school estate.
This is potentially much more than replacing ageing school buildings.
The earlier consultation envisaged an education campus which could bring together education, sport, leisure, health, arts and community facilities. The council described it as potentially becoming a civic asset for the whole town.
If the project progresses, it could be one of the most significant public investments in Thurso for a generation.
It also illustrates an important point about Caithness. Large infrastructure projects do not come along very often, so when they do, the community needs to think carefully about what it wants from them.
A new school is important.
A new school that helps regenerate part of a town and provides facilities for the wider community could be transformational.
Lybster Primary provides a very different picture
While Thurso is contemplating a £100 million investment, Lybster Primary School and Nursery has been told that urgent improvement is required.
A Highland Council report published this month says the school has not yet made the expected progress and that urgent improvement is required across all four areas identified in the report. A newly appointed acting head teacher is to be supported by the council's Area Quality Improvement Team.
It is important not to jump from one inspection report to conclusions about a school or its staff.
But it does highlight the very different challenges facing rural education.
The future of education in Caithness cannot simply be about building new facilities. It also has to be about ensuring that children in smaller communities receive the same quality of education and support as children elsewhere.
That is one of the difficult questions facing the council as it considers its school estate.
The £5 visitor levy is coming into view
Another story with potentially significant implications for Caithness tourism is Highland Council's revised visitor levy proposal.
The latest proposal is for a charge of £5 per room or accommodation area per night for hotels, guest houses, B&Bs, rooms in houses, short-term lets and similar accommodation. Hostels and campsites would face a £2 charge. December, January and February would be excluded.
The council estimates that the levy could raise around £9 million a year.
But this is not yet a new tax on tourists.
A statutory 12-week consultation is due to begin in early September. If the council eventually decides to introduce the levy, legislation requires an 18-month implementation period.
For Caithness, the argument is particularly important.
Tourism brings money into the county, but visitors also use roads, car parks, public toilets, beaches, footpaths and other facilities. Somebody has to pay for maintaining those things.
The question is whether a visitor levy will improve the visitor experience sufficiently to justify the additional cost.
And perhaps more importantly for Caithness, whether the money raised across Highland will actually find its way back into the communities which are dealing with the pressures created by tourism.
That is something local businesses should be watching very carefully.
Wick and East Caithness is heading for a by-election
Politics has also moved up the local agenda.
The vacancy created by the resignation of Councillor Willie Mackay has triggered a Highland Council by-election in Ward 3, Wick and East Caithness. Nominations close at 4pm today, 31 August, and if the election is contested, voters will go to the polls on 1 October.
It may be only one seat on Highland Council, but by-elections can be useful indicators of local political feeling.
The campaign should also provide an opportunity to ask some straightforward questions.
What does Caithness want from Highland Council?
Are roads good enough?
Are housing needs being addressed?
Are rural communities getting a fair share of investment?
Does enough decision-making take place in Caithness rather than Inverness?
And perhaps the biggest question of all: what should the council's priorities be over the next five years?
The candidates will have their opportunity to answer those questions.
Voters should listen carefully to the answers.
The Gillock play park delay is a small story with a bigger message
Not every important local story involves millions of pounds.
Plans to upgrade Gillock play park in Thurso have been delayed because of a lack of manpower, according to local reporting.
On its own, this is hardly a major economic story.
But it illustrates something residents experience regularly. Councils can announce projects, allocate money and make plans, yet actually delivering relatively modest improvements can take considerably longer than people expect.
That matters because people's view of local government is often shaped less by enormous capital projects than by whether the things they see every day actually work.
A good play park, a clean street, a repaired pavement, a properly maintained public toilet or a road without potholes may seem mundane.
For residents, they are not mundane at all.
Caithness communities are still making things happen
The picture is not entirely one of problems.
Local community organisations continue to produce projects and events which improve their areas, often with relatively modest sums and considerable voluntary effort.
The Highland Council's Caithness Committee has recently approved discretionary funding for a range of local initiatives, including support for the North Highland Chamber of Commerce's Caithness Transport Forum.
That transport forum is particularly interesting because transport remains one of the fundamental economic constraints on Caithness.
A county can have businesses, workers and investment opportunities, but distance still matters.
Getting people and goods to and from Caithness costs money and takes time.
Tourism provides opportunity, but also exposes the infrastructure problem
The proposed visitor levy brings us back to a much bigger issue.
Caithness wants more visitors.
Businesses need more visitors.
Hotels, guest houses, restaurants, attractions, shops and activity providers all benefit from people coming to the county.
But successful tourism creates its own pressures.
More traffic means more pressure on roads.
More visitors mean more demand for parking and public facilities.
Popular natural attractions require management.
And if visitors are being asked to pay an additional charge, they will quite reasonably expect the experience to justify it.
This creates a challenge for Highland Council which goes beyond taxation.
If the council eventually collects millions of pounds through a visitor levy, Caithness should be able to see tangible evidence of where at least some of that money is being spent.
Otherwise the argument will quickly become one about taxation rather than investment.
The labour shortage has not gone away
There is another issue which rarely makes the front page but may be more important to Caithness's future than almost anything else.
Where are the workers going to come from?
Caithness has an ageing population and a relatively small local labour pool. At the same time, some of the biggest opportunities coming to the area are in sectors requiring skilled workers.
Dounreay's decommissioning programme, energy developments, engineering, construction, tourism and other sectors will all require people.
National changes to immigration policy therefore have a very real local consequence.
If Britain becomes more restrictive about recruiting workers from overseas, rural areas cannot simply assume that the vacancies will be filled locally.
That means Caithness needs to be thinking seriously about training, apprenticeships, housing and attracting people to live here.
Having jobs is only half the equation.
People need somewhere to live.
Housing remains part of the economic problem
Housing can sometimes be treated as a social issue separate from economic development.
In Caithness, the two are inseparable.
A business can advertise a job but struggle to recruit someone if that person cannot find suitable accommodation.
A young person may want to remain in Caithness but find it difficult to establish a household.
A company considering expansion has to think about where additional employees will live.
There is therefore a danger of talking enthusiastically about investment while overlooking one of the things needed to make that investment work.
You cannot attract a growing workforce without somewhere for that workforce to live.
That applies just as much to Caithness as it does to Inverness or Aberdeen.
And then there is the question of confidence
Perhaps the most interesting story of the week is not actually a particular announcement.
It is the mixture of optimism and frustration running through the news.
On one hand, Caithness has enormous potential.
There is nuclear decommissioning and the possibility of new nuclear development. There is renewable energy. There are engineering opportunities. There is tourism. There is the Flow Country. There are businesses already operating successfully in some remarkably difficult circumstances.
On the other hand, there are ageing public buildings, pressure on rural schools, housing problems, transport difficulties and concerns about whether public investment is distributed fairly across the Highlands.
That combination creates a strange situation.
Caithness can simultaneously be a place with enormous economic opportunities and a place where people feel that too little is happening.
Both things can be true.
A county at a turning point
Put the ten stories together and a pattern begins to appear.
The proposed Thurso education campus represents major investment.
The Lybster school report reminds us that investment is not only about buildings.
The visitor levy raises questions about how tourism pays for the infrastructure it uses.
The Wick and East Caithness by-election gives residents an opportunity to question local political priorities.
The Gillock play park delay illustrates the frustrations of everyday public services.
Community projects demonstrate that local people are still willing to take matters into their own hands.
Housing and labour supply could determine whether future investment actually produces lasting economic growth.
And the continuing development of energy, nuclear and tourism opportunities means Caithness may have a bigger economic opportunity in front of it than it has had for many years.
The danger is that the county simply talks about potential without turning enough of it into reality.
That is why the next few years could be important.
Caithness does not need every problem solved at once andv along with a need to make sure that the opportunities which do arrive are properly exploited.
It needs houses for the workers, good schools for their children, reliable roads and transport to help make communities that people actually want to live in.
It needs businesses which can grow.
And it needs local politicians prepared to argue for Caithness rather than simply accepting whatever happens to come from elsewhere.
The next decade could be very different from the last.
But it will not happen automatically.
The big question for Caithness is no longer simply “What opportunities are coming?”
It is increasingly:
“Are we organised and confident enough to make the most of them?”