Constituency

Everything you wanted to know about the constituency...

Inverness East, Nairn and Lochaber is geographically the second largest constituency in the country and has one of the largest electorates with over 70,000 voters.

It stretches from the islands of Eigg, Rum, Muck and Canna on the west coast to the seaside town of Nairn on the east coast and south through the villages of Aviemore, Kingussie, Newtonmore & Dalwhinne to the Drumochter pass.

The major towns and villages include the eastern half of Inverness, Nairn, Fort William, Grantown-on-Spey, Kingussie, Mallaig, Newtonmore, Kinlochleven, Aviemore, Ballachulish and Spean Bridge.

General Information

Inverness is the capital of the Highlands and the administrative centre for the Highland Council and Highlands and Islands Enterprise. It provides a wide range of services and job opportunities as well as functioning as the region's main shopping centre. Major employers include Lifescan in Inverness which produces medical kits. Part county town, part market town, part modern administrative centre of an enormous developing region, Inverness is the hub for communications in the area.

Nairnshire, in the east, has a mix of small businesses and is heavily reliant on tourism in the summer. Badenoch and Strathspey in the south-east contains the Cairngorm mountains and National Park. Its main industries are farming and tourism - especially skiing and other outdoor sports throughout the year but particularly in the winter. Lochaber in the west is centred on Fort William. The area's main industries include paper making, aluminium smelting, aquaculture, tourism, fishing, agriculture and quarrying. with the service sector playing a key supporting role. There are four multi-national firms in the area which employ significant numbers, but more than 80 per cent of Lochaber businesses employ fewer than 25 people.

Much of the landscape is dominated by mountain, loch, moorland and part of the Cairngorm plateau. It also boasts the highest mountain in the British Isles, namely Ben Nevis and home of the monster, Loch Ness!. This diverse landscape gives rise to a number of sources of employment such as service industries, tourism, forestry, farming, fishing and bio technology.