Badenoch and Strathspey - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Badenoch and Strathspey as a local government district 1975 to 1996

Badenoch and Strathspey is a local government ward of the Highland

Highland (council area)

Highland is a council area in the Scottish Highlands and is the largest local government area in both Scotland and the United Kingdom 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...

council area and a ward management area of the Highland Council in Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

. It was previously one of eight districts of the two-tier Highland region

Regions and districts of Scotland

The local government areas of Scotland were redefined by the Local Government Act 1973 and redefined again by the Local Government etc Act 1994....

, 1975 to 1996, and one of eight management areas of the Highland Council, 1996 to 2007.

The district was created under the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973

Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973

The Local Government Act 1973 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, that reformed local government in Scotland, on May 16, 1975....

as one of the eight districts of the Highland region. The same legislation abolished counties

Counties of Scotland

The counties of Scotland were the principal local government divisions of Scotland until 1975. Scotland's current lieutenancy areas and registration counties are largely based on them. They are often referred to as historic counties....

and burgh

Burgh

A burgh was an autonomous corporate entity in Scotland and Northern England, usually a town. This type of administrative division existed from the 12th century, when King David I created the first royal burghs. Burgh status was broadly analogous to borough status, found in the rest of the United...

s as local government areas, and the Badenoch and Strathspey district was formed by combining the areas of (in the county of Inverness) the burgh of Kingussie

Kingussie

Kingussie is a small town in the Highland region of Scotland. It is one settlement in the Highland Council ward of Badenoch and Strathspey, and is the capital of the district of Badenoch. It lies beside the A9 road, although the old route of the A9 serves as the town's main street...

and the district of Badenoch

Badenoch

Badenoch is a traditional district which today forms part of Badenoch and Strathspey, an area of Highland Council, in Scotland, bounded on the north by the Monadhliath Mountains, on the east by the Cairngorms and Braemar, on the south by Atholl and the Grampians, and on the west by Lochaber...

with (in the county of Moray) the burgh of Grantown-on-Spey

Grantown-on-Spey

Grantown-on-Spey is a town in the Highland Council Area in Scotland.It was founded in 1765 as a planned settlement on a low plateau at Freuchie beside the river Spey at the northern edge of the Cairngorm mountains, about 20 miles South East of Inverness .It is the main town in what was the...

and the district of Cromdale

Cromdale

Cromdale is a village in Highland, Scotland and one of the ancient parishes which formed the combined ecclesiastical parish of "Cromdale, Inverallan and Advie" in Morayshire....

. The traditional area of Strathspey

Strathspey, Scotland

Strathspey is the area around the strath of the River Spey, Scotland, in both the Moray council area and the Badenoch and Strathspey committee area of Highland....

was thus divided between the Highland region and the Grampian

Grampian

Grampian was a local government region of Scotland from 1975 to 1996. It is now divided into the unitary council areas of:*Moray*Aberdeenshire*City of AberdeenThe region had five districts:*Aberdeen*Banff and Buchan...

region.

In 1996, under the Local Government etc (Scotland) Act 1994, the Highland Region became the Highland Council Area

Council Area

A Council Area is one of the areas defined in Schedule 1 of the Local Government etc. Act 1994 and is under the control of one of the local authorities in Scotland created by that Act.-Legislation :1889...

and the districts were abolished. The Highland Council (in law a new and different entity), as the successor authority, then adopted the areas of the former districts as management areas and created area committees to represent them. The Badenoch and Strathspey management and committee areas consisted of five out of the 72 Highland Council wards. Each ward elected one councillor by the first past the post system of election. In 1999, however, ward boundaries were redrawn but management area boundaries were not. As a result, area committees were named for, and made decisions for, areas which they did not exactly represent. The new Badenoch and Strathspey committee area consisted of five out of the 80 new Highland Council wards.

New wards were created for elections in May 2007, under the Local Governance (Scotland) Act 2004

Local Governance (Scotland) Act 2004

The Local Governance Act 2004 is an Act of the Scottish Parliament which provided, inter alia, for the election of Councillors to the local authorities in Scotland by the Single Transferable Vote system....

. As the wards became effective for representational purposes, the Highland Council's management and committee structures were re-organised. The Badenoch and Strathspey management area and the Badenoch and Strathspey area committee were therefore abolished. The new wards are much larger, each electing three or four councillors by the single transferable vote

Single transferable vote

The single transferable vote is a voting system designed to achieve proportional representation through preferential voting. Under STV, an elector's vote is initially allocated to his or her most preferred candidate, and then, after candidates have been either elected or eliminated, any surplus or...

system; Badencoch and Strathspey is now a single ward, electing four of the council's 80 members, and a ward management area within the council's new Inverness, Nairn and Badenoch and Strathspey corporate management area. The new corporate area is one of three covering the council area. It consists of nine of the 22 wards of the council area, and the nine wards elect 34 of the council's members.

See also