Highland

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The Highland Council Area Sgire Comhairle na Gàidhealtachd
Location

Geography
Area	Ranked 1st
- Total	30,659 km²
- % Water	?
Admin HQ	Inverness
ISO 3166-2	GB-HLD
ONS code	00QT
Demographics
Population	Ranked 7th
- Total (2005)	213,590
- Density	8 / km²
Politics
The Highland Council http://www.highland.gov.uk/ (Comhairle na Gaidhealtachd http://www.highland.gov.uk/gaidhlig.htm)
Control	Independent
MPs	Danny Alexander for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey Charles Kennedy for Ross, Skye and Lochaber John Thurso for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross
MSPs	Eleanor Scott for Highlands and Islands Fergus Ewing for Inverness East, Nairn and Lochaber Jamie McGrigor for Highlands and Islands Jamie Stone for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross Jim Mather for Highlands and Islands John Farquhar Munro for Ross, Skye and Inverness West Dave Petrie for Highlands and Islands Maureen MacMillan for Highlands and Islands Peter Peacock for Highlands and Islands Rob Gibson for Highlands and Islands

Logo of the Highland Council.

This article is about the Highland council area in Scotland. For other uses, see Highland (disambiguation).

The Highland Council Area ('Sgìre Comhairle na Gàidhealtachd'^[1] in Gaelic) is a local government area in the Scottish Highlands and the largest local government area in Scotland, and in the UK as a whole. It shares borders with the council areas of Moray, Aberdeenshire, Perth and Kinross, and Argyll and Bute. Their councils, and those of Angus and Stirling, also have areas of the Scottish Highlands within their administrative boundaries. The Highland area covers most of the mainland and inner-Hebridean parts of the former counties of Inverness-shire and Ross and Cromarty, all of Sutherland, Caithness and Nairnshire, and small parts of Argyll and Moray.

The area was created as a two-tier region in 1975, with an elected council for the whole region and, in addition, elected councils for each of eight districts, Badenoch and Strathspey, Caithness, Inverness, Lochaber, Nairn, Ross and Cromarty, Skye and Lochalsh and Sutherland. In 1996 the Highland Regional Council and the included District Councils were wound up and their functions were transferred to the new Highland Council. The Highland Council maintains area committees named after and meeting within the old districts, but these area committees are set to disappear this year, 2007.

The Council Area headquarters is located in Inverness with most previous District Council offices retained as outstations.

1 Politics
2 Towns and villages in the Highland Council Area
3 Places of interest in the Highland Council Area
4 Footnotes
- 4.1 External links

Politics

Main article Politics of the Highland council area

Councillors

The council represents 80 wards. Each ward elects one councillor by the first past the post system of election.

For the next election, however, polling on 3 May 2007, there are 22 wards, each electing three or four councillors by the single transferable vote system. The total number of councillors will remain the same.^[2]