Northern Lighthouse Board

The NLB was formed by Act of Parliament in 1786 as the Commissioners of Northern Light Houses, largely at the urging of the lawyer and politician George Dempster ("Honest George"), to oversee the construction and operation of four Scottish lighthouses: Kinnaird Head, North Ronaldsay, Scalpay and Mull of Kintyre, for which they were empowered to borrow up to £1,200.

The commissioners, whose first president was the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, Sir James Hunter-Blair, advertised for building estimates, but there were no takers.

To get to Scalpay in the Outer Hebrides and North Ronaldsay in the Orkney Isles needed boat trips across rough waters for Smith and Mills, the stonemason, but all the same the job was completed by October 1789, to widespread praise.

[3] The board is based at its Georgian headquarters building in George Street in the centre of Edinburgh, from where it remotely monitors its network.

Technical operations are carried out from a base in Oban, Argyll and Bute, where there are maintenance workshops and facilities for the construction of buoys and beacons.

Under the terms of the Scotland Act 1998, the NLB is not a devolved body and thus remains directly accountable to the UK Secretary of State for Transport.

[6] The current Commissioners of Northern Lighthouses, as provided by Schedule 8 to the Merchant Shipping Act 1995, are the Lord Advocate and the Solicitor General for Scotland; the lords provost of Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Aberdeen, the conveners of the Highland Council and the Argyll and Bute Council; the sheriffs principal of all the sheriffdoms in Scotland; a Manx representative nominated by the Lieutenant Governor of the Isle of Man and appointed by the Secretary of State; and up to five co-opted commissioners.