Everything about Lochaber totally explained
» For the municipality in Canada, see Lochaber, Quebec.
Lochaber (
Scottish Gaelic Loch Abar) is one of the 16 ward management areas of the
Highland Council of
Scotland and one of eight former
local government districts of the two-tier
Highland region. There are also earlier senses of Lochaber as a district within the
county of Inverness (Inverness-shire), as a district within the county of
Argyll and as simply a district of Scotland. All senses of Lochaber refer to an area in the west of the
Scottish Highlands.
The ward management area is one of five comprising the Highland Council's
Ross, Skye and Lochaber corporate management area, which is one of three Highland Council corporate management areas. The Ross, Skye and Lochaber area consists of six out of the 22 wards of the council area and the Lochaber area consists of two wards, the
Caol and Mallaig ward, which elects three councillors, and the
Fort William and Ardnamurchan ward, which elects four councillors. Each of the other wards of the corporate area is a separate ward management area.
There is also a
Ross, Skye and Lochaber constituency of the
House of Commons of the
Parliament of the United Kingdom (at
Westminster), but its boundaries are not exactly those of the council corporate management area. The constituency was created in 2005 with boundaries based on those of wards in use during the period 1999 to 2007.
History of local government
As
statutory local government areas, the Highland region and its districts were created in 1975, under the
Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973, and abolished in 1996.
The 1973 legislation abolished local government
counties and
burghs throughout Scotland and created a new system of nine two-tier regions and three
islands council areas. Each region consisted of a number of districts and the islands areas were created as unitary council areas.
The Lochaber district of the Highland region was created by merging the
Ardnamurchan district and the
Ballachulish and
Kinlochleven electoral divisions of the former county of
Argyll with the burgh of
Fort William and the district of Lochaber of the former county of Inverness. Therefore the boundaries of the district included
North Lorne,
Glen Coe,
Nether Lochaber, the western part of the
Rannoch Moor, the
Road to the Isles,
Moidart,
Ardgour,
Morvern,
Sunart,
Ardnamurchan, and the
Small Isles (
Rùm,
Eigg,
Muck and
Canna).
The 1994 legislation abolished regions and districts and established a system of 32 unitary council areas covering the whole of Scotland, and all of the Highland districts were merged into the new unitary Highland council area.
In 1996 the new
Highland Council adopted the areas of the former districts as council management areas, and created
area committees to represent them. The Lochaber management area then consisted of eight out of the 72
wards of the council area, each electing one
councillor by the first past the post system of election. In 1999 ward boundaries were redrawn to create 80 new wards. Management area boundaries were not redrawn, however, and therefore area committees ceased to represent exactly the areas for which they were named and made decisions. The Lochaber committee continued to have eight members. The area manager throughout this period (1996 - 2007) was John Hutchison.
Ward boundaries were redrawn again this year, 2007, under the
Local Governance (Scotland) Act 2004, and the council abolished its eight management areas in favour of three new corporate management areas and 16 new ward management areas. Each of the 22 new wards elects three or four councillors by the
single transferable vote system, a system designed to produce a form of
proportional representation, and the total number of councillors remains the same. Various ward management areas, including the Locahaber area, cover more than one ward.
Many people buy land in such areas as Locahaber, including recently added Lord and Lady Wilson.
Lochaber used to be known as Abria.
There are several Lords of Lochaber including Lord Donald Mathews, Lord Billy Sills, Lady Marion Sills,etc. Lochaber Highland Estates has sold them land.
Hydroelectric scheme
The Lochaber
hydroelectric scheme was a power generation project constructed in the western
Scottish Highlands after the
First World War. Like its predecessor at
Kinlochleven, it was intended to provide electricity for
aluminium production, this time at
Fort William, a little further north. The scheme was initially designed by
engineer Charles Meik but after his death in 1923, the scheme’s realisation was left to
William Halcrow, by then a partner in the firm originally founded by Meik’s father
Thomas Meik.
The project was finally sanctioned by Parliament in 1921, but construction didn't start until 1924; the aluminium smelter was established in 1929 and took about 95% of the of power generated.
The scheme harnessed the headwaters of the Rivers
Treig and
Spean and the floodwaters of the
River Spey (plus a further eleven
burns along the way). The
Laggan Dam (long and high) contained the flow of the Spean in a
reservoir (
Loch Laggan). A
tunnel then linked this body of water with another reservoir (
Loch Treig) contained by the Treig dam. From here, the main tunnel, until
1970 the longest water-carrying tunnel in the world, an enormous long and in diameter, was driven around the
Ben Nevis massif. From the western mountainside, down five massive
steel pipes, the water rushed towards the
turbines in the power house at the
smelting plant.
Notes and references
Further Information
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