A specialist Edinburgh firm have been awarded a £20,000 contract to keep Highland Council’s timepieces in tick tock condition.
H E Weir & Son have been tasked with maintaining and repairing external clocks on buildings belonging to the local authority.
This includes more than 30 clocks across the north – including the distinctive Inverness steeple.
The firm, who describe themselves as public and steeple clock specialists, have worked for Highland Council for more than two decades already on an occasional basis.
But now Highland Council have made the arrangement official by granting the father and son company a £20,345 contract.
Owner Bert Weir said: “We’ve doing the clocks on an ad-hoc basis in the Highlands for years, going back to the days of the district councils.
“We’ve never had a formal contract though and I’m not sure exactly why Highland Council have brought that in now.
“It means we are pretty familiar with the majority of the clocks involved though so that gives us a head start.
“Basically we’ll carry out regular checks of the clocks to see that they are running okay and if they’re not we’ll go back to the council and check if we are allowed to spend the money to fix it.”
The compnay also have arrangements with a number of other local authorities, including Western Isles Council and Orkney Council.
They also carry out work for several churches and privately owned external clocks.