The Transient Visitor Levy is an innovation we can all be proud that Edinburgh is making. The legislation was passed in Holyrood in 2024, thanks to Scottish Green MSPs’ input in previous budget negotiations. The idea was raised in the City of Edinburgh by Greens more than a decade ago we strongly welcomed the levy rolling out in our capital city – the first city in the UK to do so.
While it is an innovation for Scotland, it is not exactly innovative in a global sense. It is common in Europe for destination cities to have some sort of surcharge for visitors to pay for a city’s civic costs. Today we take the final step in Edinburgh joining those cities, as it should have done years ago. It is just a shame that we have missed out on the funds over these years, while council budgets have been squeezed and we have been forced to make cuts every year.
There are restrictions in the legislation, notably that proposals have an undue focus on the needs and desires of businesses compared to residents and the real people involved. Visitors pay the visitor levy, the clue is in the name, and visitors are not necessarily well served by a drive to expand tourism infinitely
At yesterday’s full council meeting, Greens proposed something radical (as we do!) that put people and planet at the heart of the visitor levy spending. Unfortunately, despite apparent support for some or all of our proposals from several councillors in the room, timid centrism won the day instead of our better, more radical position
We proposed removing funding for ‘Destination Edinburgh’ and events marketing – we believe Edinburgh doesn’t need to market itself as a destination city. We would have extracted sustainability from the collected Future Tourism Development fund and funded it separately to ensure it has the focus and funding we believe is necessary. Likewise, Accessibility funding would be extracted from the Tourism Excellence funding to focus on, and increase spending on, making Edinburgh an accessible city.
Perhaps the change that drew the most gasps from other parties in the chamber was our proposal to move funding away from the police. The reasons for this was two-fold. It is not for local councils to fund national bodies. More importantly, anyone who works late at night or enjoys Edinburgh’s nightlife knows that in many situations, police involvement can exacerbate problems, especially for vulnerable and minority groups.
We also didn’t consider removing graffiti from private buildings or putting up bunting the best use of the levy funds. Instead, we proposed to give everyone a free day of bus travel in August 2026. This would be a trial expanded in the next two years during the Fridays of the Fringe to encourage use public transport by visitors and residents alike.
Our other big change in revenue would be not subsidising the Tour de France. Instead of starting this levy by funding global events with a huge carbon footprint, we should be focusing on making culture more affordable, creating and looking after public art that enriches our environment, developing Gaelic cultural projects, and creating a climate cultural events fund so that everything we do can address our climate and nature emergencies.
Finally on the local end, Cllr Dan Heap proudly proposed a funding mechanism for Gorgie farm, an attraction that holds a special place in the hearts of visitors and residents alike. We hoped to transfer £50k to grants for ‘Friends’ groups – as we all know communities know best how to look after their local assets.
We feel let down by other so-called progressive groups. Our City Centre councillor Claire Miller was gobsmacked that SNP councillors combined with Labour and Lib Dems to scupper the long overdue pedestrian and cycle priority project for George Street. This was an important section of the ‘City Centre West-East Link’ or CCWEL, the segregated route to cycle safely between Roseburn and the top of Leith Walk. The project is almost ready to start, with designs that have taken a decade to develop in collaboration with all stakeholders.
She has called out the deficiencies of the designs before – far too few trees and not nearly enough protection for cyclists – but it’s essential that the project goes ahead to complete the CCWEL. Greens stand by the many residents and businesses who have invested considerable time and energy into a vision and design which would transform George Street.
By encouraging sustainable and responsible tourism we hoped that, instead of a short-term boom and bust approach to tourism, we would be locking in a destination city for future generations to enjoy and live and work in. However, the Convenor of Finance and Resources raised several points of merit within our proposal and we hope to push for better visitor levy spending in the future.