Back to the future
The off-grid population is growing in the Scottish Highlands at an unprecedented rate. “For the first time in a thousand years that there are more people moving into the Highlands than are moving out,” Professor James Hunter told the Financial Times. If the trend continues, the Highland population will be back at 1851 levels within 20 years, says the professor of History. By 2001 the population of the Highlands and Islands had risen to 434,000, compared with 378,000 40 years before. And, according to the Highland and Islands Enterprise Network, more than half of the newcomers are English. In a region that had been a byword for depopulation the turnaround is extraordinary.
A thousand people are on the waiting list of the Crofters Commission, a government agency that establishes whether refugees from the rat-race are in a position to herd cattle. The number of applicants has swollen by a fifth in the past two years, and some people have been waiting 11 years for a croft. Almost half registered are under the age of 40. (more…)