Local · Scotland
Highland
Official links and figures for Highland, in one place. Always check the official source before you act.
If someone’s life is in danger, call 999. For a power cut, call 105. This page lists official sources and figures. It does not say how safe or risky anywhere is.
Council pages
- Emergency planning Emergencies, safety and crime – Highland Council
- Gritting and winter roads Keeping roads safe in winter
- Sandbags Flooding advice
- Where rest centres or emergency help are announced Not found yet. Check the council website.
Power cuts
Network operator (not your supplier):
- Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (North Scotland)
Our log of the Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks live fault feed recorded 1 unplanned cut here from 1 November 2026, 16:05 GMT to 1 November 2026, 16:36 GMT.
Ofgem’s figures for the whole licence area, April 2024 to March 2025, counting cuts of 3 minutes or longer:
- North Scotland (Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks): 59.1 interruptions per 100 customers and 68.9 minutes without power per customer (2023/24: 56.6 and 65.6)
Great Britain as a whole: 39.7 and 35.1. These are area averages, not figures for Highland alone. About this dataset
Flooding
SEPA (Scottish Environment Protection Agency): 5 flood alert areas and 44 flood warning areas overlap Highland. Flood sources SEPA gives for them: coastal, coastal/fluvial, fluvial.
Warning areas include: Aigas to Beauly; Ardersier to Nairn; Aviemore/Dalfaber; Aviemore/Dalfaber to Grantown; Beauly Firth; Conon Bridge; Corpach and Caol; Cromarty Firth; and 36 more.
Where the nearest A&E departments are
The nearest type 1 (major) A&E departments to the centre of each of the largest built-up areas, by straight-line distance (as the crow flies, not by road):
- Inverness: Raigmore Hospital (2.0 km); Dr Gray's Hospital (56.9 km); Belford Hospital (89.6 km). Nearest minor injury or other units: Nairn Town and County Hospital (24.3 km); County Community Hospital - Invergordon (25.8 km).
- Cradlehall: Raigmore Hospital (2.9 km); Dr Gray's Hospital (52.1 km). Nearest minor injury or other units: Nairn Town and County Hospital (19.8 km); County Community Hospital - Invergordon (24.5 km).
- Wick (Highland): Caithness General Hospital (0.7 km); Balfour Hospital (59.0 km). Nearest minor injury or other units: Dunbar Hospital (30.3 km); Lawson Memorial Hospital (74.5 km).
Never Caught Out is not affiliated with the NHS. For medical help that is not an emergency, contact 111 or NHS inform. About this dataset
Water supply
Water company for this area:
- Scottish Water · Latest in your area
Phone and broadband coverage
Ofcom’s predictions of normal coverage in Highland, January 2026. They are not live outages and not a guarantee for any address.
- Homes and businesses with 4G indoors from all four networks: 82%; from none: 1.3%.
- Outside homes and businesses, 4G from all four networks: 97%; from none: 0.2%.
- Land area with outdoor 4G from all four networks: 61%; from none: 16%.
- Premises that can get gigabit-capable broadband: 63%.
- Premises that cannot get decent broadband (10 Mbit/s down, 1 Mbit/s up) from a fixed line or fixed wireless: 2,040 (1.5%).
Check an address on Ofcom’s coverage checker · Phones when the network is down: how to reach 999 · Your right to request decent broadband (Ofcom) · About this dataset
Coast
Yes. About 4,460 km of the boundary is shoreline at mean high water.
Local radio
Weather warnings
UK-wide Met Office warnings in our log: 0 since 1 November 2026, 14:53 GMT.
Emergency planning partnership
North of Scotland Regional Resilience Partnership: its community risk register lists the emergencies planned for here.
Census 2022: planning prompts
- Households with no car or van: 18.2%
- Residents aged 65 or over: 23.7%
- Households of one person aged 66 or over: 15.5%
Largest built-up areas
- Inverness
SEPA warning areas naming Inverness: Inverness City (Ness Bridge to Friars Bridge); Inverness Harbour & South Kessock.
- Cradlehall
- Wick (Highland)
SEPA warning areas naming Wick: Wick.
- Ardersier
SEPA warning areas naming Ardersier: Ardersier to Nairn.
Neighbouring councils
Aberdeenshire, Argyll and Bute, Moray, Perth and Kinross
Useful wherever you live
- Power cut: call 105 free. What to do in a power cut · Priority Services Register · Compensation calculator
- What to do in a flood
- Current Met Office warnings · What the colours mean
- Your water bill names your water company, or find it by postcode (Water UK).
- A battery or wind-up radio keeps working in a power cut.
- Census prompts: who would fetch food or medicines for you or a neighbour on icy or flooded roads, and who would you check on in a power cut? Ask your pharmacist about repeat prescriptions before bad weather.
How these figures were gathered
- Council links were opened on 1 November 2026 and each page mentioned its topic. A person has not yet checked them.
- Power cut counts are incidents only, not homes affected or how long cuts lasted.
- An area counts as overlapping if at least 1% of it lies inside the council boundary.
- A&E distances are straight lines from the centre point ONS gives for each built-up area to the centre of the hospital’s postcode. Travel distances and times will be longer.
- Phone and broadband figures are Ofcom’s council-level predictions for January 2026. Mobile coverage uses Ofcom’s signal thresholds; an operator’s network counts if its predicted signal meets them.
- Coastline is our measurement: the part of the ONS boundary (clipped to mean high water) not shared with another council, rounded. Tidal river edges are not counted as coast.
- Census figures are planning prompts, not risk scores. The household figure uses 66 and over, as the census tables do.
- Scotland’s Census 2022 figures are our sums of National Records of Scotland output-area tables UV405, UV101b and UV113, so they may differ slightly from NRS council totals.
- Built-up areas are the largest by land area, up to four, from ONS Built-up Areas 2022. Flood areas listed under a town are those whose official name includes it; a missing area does not mean a street will not flood.
Publishing check
Before a local page is shown to search engines it has to pass every rule below on 14 nights in a row. Until then it stays online for anyone who follows a link, but search engines are asked not to list it. Last run: 1 November 2026, 16:38 GMT. Result: Not yet.
| Rule | Needed | This page | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fields filled | 12 or more of 18 | 14 of 18 | Pass |
| Facts that set this page apart | 6 or more | 6 (fields 5, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15) | Pass |
| Official council links | 3 or more, each opened and checked by a person | 3 different links opened automatically; 0 checked by a person yet | Not yet: waiting for a person to check |
| Length of our own records | 90 days or more for power cuts, floods or weather | 0 days (logging began 1 Nov 2026) | Not yet |
| Text not too similar to other pages | Similarity below 0.5 | Highest 0.27 (median 0.20) | Pass |
| Figures not identical to another page | No identical set | Unique | Pass |
| Unusual figures checked | Any figure far outside the national range checked by a person | Not checked yet: we do not have national figures to compare against | Not checked yet |
| Stable over time | Passes every rule on 14 nights in a row | 0 of 14 nights | Not yet |
Official sources we used
- RIIO-2 Electricity Distribution annual report 2024 to 2025: supplementary data file (Open Government Licence) (Ofgem)
- 105: the power cut helpline (Energy Networks Association)
- Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks: power cuts (Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks)
- Flood Warning Areas and Flood Alert Areas (© SEPA 2024, Open Government Licence 3.0) (SEPA)
- Flooding (SEPA)
- List of A&E type 1 departments (April 2026) (NHS England)
- NHS Scotland accident and emergency sites (Open Government Licence) (Public Health Scotland)
- Postcode locations (OS OpenData licence; contains Ordnance Survey, Royal Mail and National Statistics data) (postcodes.io)
- Scottish Water: Latest in your area (Scottish Water)
- Connected Nations update: Spring 2026, mobile and fixed coverage data (Open Government Licence) (Ofcom)
- BBC Radio Scotland: listen live (BBC Sounds)
- BBC Radio nan Gàidheal: listen live (BBC Sounds)
- UK weather warnings (Met Office)
- North of Scotland Regional Resilience Partnership: community risk register (North of Scotland Regional Resilience Partnership)
- Civil emergency whole-system preparedness 2025 report (Scottish Government)
- Scotland’s Census 2022: output area data (UV405, UV101b, UV113) (National Records of Scotland)
- Census 2022 output area centroids with council codes (National Records of Scotland)
- Built-up Areas (December 2022) GB boundaries (ONS Open Geography Portal)
- Local authority district boundaries and codes (ONS Open Geography Portal)