Arts, council houses and clean streets among the winners from city tourist tax

Funds could pay for £70m homes programme and investment in culture and heritage

Busy times in the Royal Mile: Pic by John Drummond

The city will be able to invest up to £50m more a year in ‘affordable’ housing, the arts and improving infrastructure under council plans to tax tourists and visitors to the city.

Projects as diverse as improving the streetscape of Princes Street and George Street, installing larger capacity underground bins, or finding new and improved ways to create sustainable funding models for our essential Festivals, are also all on the agenda.

City council plans to raise somewhere between £40m - £50m in new funding every year through the introduction of a Visitor Levy – or tourist tax – are manna from heaven for our financially stretched and under-funded local authority.

A report to go before councillors at the Policy and Sustainability Committee next week sets out how the council sees the new 5% tourist tax will be gathered and spent, within the limits of legislation which states it must support “developing, supporting or sustaining facilities or services which are substantially for or used by persons visiting the scheme area for leisure or business purposes”.

While many in the sector welcomed the paper as a solid start from which to begin what is effectively a two-year process covering further in-depth consultation and implementation, the devil, as ever, will be in the details of the discussions still to come, with a first acid test likely when elected councillors have an opportunity to discuss and debate the proposals contained in the officials’ report next Thursday.

Council Leader Cammy Day outlined the desire to “be bold ” in the way that the new funds are spent to improve the city for both visitors and locals and said that his engagement with the industry had seen that view largely shared. “We should make some impact” he added.

What are the main areas of likely spending?

The council has identified four priority areas including funding a new council house building programme, designed, the local authority says, to help alleviate the pressure on tourism industry workers who struggle to find affordable accommodation within a reasonable distance of their work.