Munro-baggers can relax – there’s no need to pull on the boots for another conquest, with the news that Beinn Dearg has been officially declared short of the magic 3,000ft mark.

Surveyors today announced that the Torridon mountain falls short by just 2ft 5in, and the number of Scottish Munros remains 284. According to measurements, the height of the Beinn’s summit is 913.675m, or 2,997ft 7in.

Beinn Dearg, in the shadow of loftier neighbours Liathach, Beinn Eighe and Beinn Alligin, is marked by the Ordnance Survey as 914m and the metric equivalent of 3,000ft is 914.4m, so it was always a close call. The mountain was surveyed in August by Jim Melville and Liam Hill of survey firm CMCR of Larbert, along with 13 mountaineers. The pair used GPS technology to determine its exact height.

In June, the company declared that Foinaven, in north-west Scotland, was 12ft short of Munro status. The Munro Society had enlisted the company to put beyond doubt the status of the two peaks whose height was thought to possibly exceed 3,000ft.

Foinaven and Beinn Dearg therefore both remain Corbetts – a mountain between 2,500ft and 2,999ft, and Beinn Dearg, whose Gaelic name means Red Mountain retains its status the country’s highest Corbett.  ‘Compleaters’ can rest on their laurels, safe in the knowledge that their 284 summits are enough.