Your Services

We have streamlined our Services to meet changes in planning and licensing legislation and to meet the Scottish Government's drive for more efficient working within tighter budget guidelines. The number of elected members remains at 80 but instead of each representing one ward, they are now grouped in 14 four-member wards and 8 three-member wards.

Service delivery

The 7 Services are:-

• Chief Executive's Service
• Education, Culture and Sport
• Finance
• Housing and Property
• Planning and Development
• Health and Social Care
• Transport, Environmental and Community Services

Focus on multi-member wards

While decision-making on policy and resource allocation is made at Highland level, operational service delivery focuses primarily at multi-member ward level.  A City Manager for Inverness and Ward Managers throughout the Highlands manage local service delivery.

• Interactive map: detailed maps of the 22 Council wards
• Multi-member wards map - printable version (656kb pdf)

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Committee structure

The current committee structure is available here. The Strategic Committee Structure from May 2007 to May 2012 was-

• Resources Committee (including Europe)
• Education Culture and Sport Committee
• Housing and Social Work Committee
• Transport Environmental and Community Services Committee
• Planning Environment and Development Committee
• Audit and Scrutiny Committee
• Gaelic Committee

A new Highland-wide Planning Review Body considers appeals against decisions taken by Planning Officers, under delegated powers.

A Planning Applications Committee operates in each of the three operational areas. A Licensing Committee (dealing with wider licensing issues such as taxi licensing) and a Licensing Board (dealing with liquor licensing and betting offices) has also been established in each of the three operational areas.

An Inverness City Committee reports directly to the Council and deals with civic matters, the Inverness Common Good Fund, scrutiny of service delivery and governance of Inverness partnerships.

Joint Highland Council / HMIE report on aspects of The Highland Council’s Education, Culture and Sport Service

A joint report by HM Inspectorate of Education and The Highland Council on the validated self-evaluation of The Highland Council (pdf 216 kb) has been published on 29 June 2010. The Highland Council worked in partnership with HMIE to evaluate aspects of the Education, Culture and Sports (ECS) Service in the Highland area. This was undertaken as a result of an expression of interest from the Council in participating in this developing national process of self-evaluation.  The report provides an evaluation of the effectiveness of the Education, Culture and Sport Service in improving the impact and outcomes for children, young people and families.

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