ILM Highland

ILM Highland is an independent charity and social enterprise, providing home improvement, electrical recycling and retail services to the Highlands of Scotland.

Reduce waste. Protect the environment. Support vulnerable people to live at home.

Our home improvement services provide free support and assistance to the most vulnerable in our community, enabling them to maintain their independence.

To support these services, we offer an extensive electrical recycling service – to the public and to businesses – as well as running an electrical retail shop online and from our base in Alness selling quality and affordable refurbished and new appliances. We also offer spare parts and repair services for a large number of electrical appliances through our Spares & Repairs service – and produce refurbished Chromebooks, ensuring old and unwanted laptops do not end up in landfill.

As a social enterprise, we reinvest every penny of profit back into our local community and our ethos remains at the core of what we do – supporting vulnerable people to be at home.

Reduce waste. Protect the environment. Support vulnerable people to live at home.

ILM Highland was founded in 1994 to provide support and advice to vulnerable people in our community, enabling them to maintain a higher level of independence and a better quality of life.

Our original aim was to support people into sustainable employment, giving us our ILM name – which stood for ‘Immediate Labour Market’.

We now support our community through our home improvement services, providing free access to specialist tradespeople and advisers to the elderly and those living with a disability – giving them a greater sense of freedom to make homecare decisions that will have a positive impact on their day-to-day lives.

Since our beginnings in Easter Ross, we now boast 28 full time staff and a team of volunteers delivering our services throughout the North of Scotland, across the Highlands, Ross-shire, Sutherland, Lochaber, Caithness, Skye and Lochalsh, Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Moray.

In addition, we provide an electrical waste recycling and reuse service for the Highland area, collecting household and business electrical and electronic equipment to be disposed of responsibly.

And we run an electrical retail shop – both online and from our headquarters in Alness – selling a wide range of quality refurbished and brand-new electrical appliances, including washing machines, tumble dryers, cookers, fridges and freezers.

Like many companies, we aim each year to make a profit – but as a social enterprise, we guarantee that every penny we make is put back into our local charity to support those in our community who need our help.

As a self-sustaining organisation, our objective is to contribute to a circular economy – receiving the majority of funding for our home improvement services through the provision of our retail and waste recycling activity.

Our community, the people we support and our team are at the heart of everything we do – and we look forward to what the future will bring.