Thurso in line for new high school and primaries as part of £2bn investment plan
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Thurso is in line for a new secondary school and three primaries as part of the newly released Highland Investment Plan worth in excess of £2 billion over the next two decades.
Highland Council plans to start redeveloping the school estate in Thurso in the next 10 years and add millions more to road maintenance.
The high school had its Block A unit condemned due to the presence of faulty concrete, while more recently the games hall at the school was impacted by a leaking oil tank.
Council leader and Caithness councillor Raymond Bremner said he is enormously hopeful about the plan because now there is a roadmap to delivering the school – along with others in the region – within “the foreseeable future.”
He said: “When we've been a council it has always been a case of which one or two schools are we going to do – and now we've got this investment programme it has opened it up to show that these projects are deliverable within the foreseeable future.”
Next week the full council will either give its blessing or not to the plan as the local authority wrestles with its two biggest investment and reputational headaches – roads and schools.
Dingwall and Thurso were specifically highlighted in the programme as being examples of where investment could, in the words of housing and property boss Mark Rodgers, make the “council’s money work harder”.
To do that, the plan does not solely focus on roads and schools – instead the council aims to find a long-term solution to its infrastructure investment headaches through Community Points of Delivery, or Community PODs.
The approach would see a rationalisation of council facilities so that more was made of existing facilities, while some would be shared with the likes of Police Scotland or NHS Highland to create “a framework of facilities and services”.
But the council noted that “a degree of flexibility will be required to ensure that local needs are considered, and solutions may not be limited to just one building or location”.
What that proposal means for Thurso is that an estimated £50 million investment in the first 10 years of the programme will be used to rebuild the High School and three primary schools.
But work is not expected to start imminently because there is no blueprint and there needs to be an options appraisal, drawing up of a masterplan and consultation, before a final decision is taken.
That means the project is more likely to be delivered in the second half of that 10-year-long Phase One, which also includes primaries for Alness, Brora and Dingwall, as well as a special school, plus secondaries for Dornoch, Invergordon, and Golspie.
The total investment estimated at the moment for all those projects is between £310 million and £385 million.
But before that, more “shovel ready” projects also included in Phase One will see Beauly Primary, Charleston Academy, Fortrose Academy and Inverness High redeveloped as plans for them are at the most advanced stage.
It is expected that work on each of those schools will commence in the next three to five years, with an estimated investment of between £155 million and £195 million.
The way the council plans to raise the money for the plan is through ring-fencing about two per cent of council tax annually and using that to borrow within strict limits – about 9-10 per cent of revenue budget.
The council said: “Thurso would benefit from the proposed creation of a new Community POD which, given the strategic location of Thurso in the north of Highland, benefits the wider community as well as Thurso itself.
“A Community POD will also address substantial disrepair issues in relation to Thurso High and other local schools impacted by HACC, 16 construction issues and enable rationalisation of a number of local public sector offices.”
