THE new Women’s Aid refuge in Anderson Street is not the only housing initiative currently underway, as many Merkinchers living next to building sites can testify. Just finishing is the refurbishment and development of Telford Villa and surely near completion is the block of flats on the former Farmers’ Dairy site also at the north end of Telford Road. This has caused considerable disruption to traffic in Lochalsh Road in recent weeks as services are put in.

Meanwhile the controversial block of flats in Dunabban Road, for which planning permission was eventually decided by the Reporter from Edinburgh, seems to have been flying up in the fine weather this summer.
And just round the corner, work has started on the burnt-out shell next to the Trinity Church which has been such an eyesore for months.

Maclennan Crescent is another development in the pipeline, and when you add all of these to the blocks of flats that have gone up in recent years in Lochalsh Road and Abban Street, plus the increasing number of lets in South Kessock, the population of Merkinch must surely be considerably higher than it was at the turn of the century.