The Scottish Languages Act’s Areas of Decreasing Significance

The need for focus is becoming clear in the implementation of the Scottish Language Act. Màrtainn Mac a’ Bhàillidh explores the problems.

Around four years after work started on what became the Scottish Language Act 2025, we’re finally seeing the Act being introduced incrementally. Section 4 of the Act, which introduces new “Areas of Linguistic Significance” (ALS) became law in March this year, with Na h-Eileanan Siar and The Highland Council given one year to consider their designations. 

Throughout the bill’s passage through Parliament there were many voices who raised concerns that these designations would prove meaningless, and early signs are that those voices were correct. Highland Council’s Gaelic Committee are meeting on Wednesday 3rd of June to consider a report from their officers which recommends designating the whole Highland Council area – ⅓ of the Scottish mainland – as a single ALS. There are also suggestions that Na h-Eileanan Siar will take a similar approach and designate their whole area. 

From the very early stages of the Bill, Misneachd argued that without limits on the maximum size of an ALS we would end up in a position where Councils make meaningless designations of their whole areas and continue with business as usual, essentially duplicating the work of their existing area-wide Gaelic Language Plans. And here we are. 

Let’s be clear – legislation was not required for Comhairle nan Eilean Siar or Highland Council to take a “place-based approach” to policy, or to do more for Gaelic across their areas. Legislation in this area was made in part in response to The Gaelic Crisis in the Vernacular Community (Soillse 2020) and a widely recognised need for more community-focused local intervention and more granular policy, particularly where the language is strongest. Not at the expense of Gaelic nationally, but to ensure that the areas where more can be done are not moving at the pace of the area where the language is weakest. 

To take the Highland region as the most pertinent example, in Eilean a’ Cheò (Isle of Skye and Raasay) 35.3% of the population have some Gaelic skills, compared to 8.1% Highland wide, and would therefore be designated under Criterion 1 of the Statutory Guidance on Designation with maximum implementation of the, as yet unpublished, ALS ‘Standards and Requirements’. 

After 40 years of GME in the Highlands, something being celebrated this year, there are staggeringly only 507 pupils in GME at High School level in the Highland region, 3.8% of a total of 13,375, and 209 of these are at Portree High School, accounting for 45% of the current Portree school roll. The remaining 298 are spread across 14 schools offering GME in the rest of Highland out of a total of 29 high schools in the region. 

There are policies and interventions which could be taken in Skye and Raasay which could not be implemented in Wick and East Caithness where only 1.9% of people have any Gaelic ability – a similar percentage to Dundee City at 1.7%. Glasgow City has a higher percentage at 2.9% than in Thurso and Northwest Caithness at 2.8%. The region also has both Nairn and Cawdor at 4.3% and Wester Ross, Strathpeffer and Lochalsh at 15.6%. 

ALS designation is about equity. Equity of policy and provision for Gaelic-speaking communities and areas where the language might yet be preserved as a habitual spoken language.

This is not to suggest for a minute that Highland Council should not be encouraging and supporting Gaelic and Gaelic speakers across all areas of the Highlands – they should, and they should be doing more across the region. But the purpose of ALS designation is to target support and strengthen policy as far as possible in the areas where more can be, and desperately needs to be, done. 

If we proceed with pointless pronouncements that we are all “significant”, regardless of where we live, what level of Gaelic we have, or how often we use the language, we negate the very meagre shift in the community language support framework intended by the 2025 Act. 

While the slow, and by all appearances increasingly irrelevant ALS designation process trundles on, two Gaelic communities; North-west Lewis and Uist, have prepared their own Community Language Plan for their local areas. A similar plan is currently being developed for Skye and Raasay. These plans have the backing of Bòrd na Gàidhlig and their respective communities of Gaelic speakers. It is imperative that the ALS structure supports and responds positively to these community-driven initiatives. That means Comhairle nan Eilean Siar and The Highland Council designating a distinct ALS for the area covered by each of these community plans. 

The Highland Council’s proposed approach will take all impetus out of the community-driven initiative in Skye and Raasay, demonstrating once again that the actual speaker communities, their needs, and their aspirations for their language and culture, will be ignored by Highland-wide considerations, as dictated from Inverness. That cannot be allowed to happen.