Tax tourists to plug council budget hole

The city council is facing a squeeze on its finances like never before. As a result, authority leader Rob Thomas has written to the Government’s Housing Minister to argue that Canterbury, with its huge, non-council tax-paying student population, is a special case. It’s a point he makes in a leaked letter to the minister, who he invites to visit the district.

There is no doubt our cash-strapped council - now stripped of its grant support from central Government - must find more inventive ways of raising revenue, and one suggestion he makes is a local tourist tax.

Anyone who has travelled to many European destinations on holiday will be familiar with such a levy, which was increased to about four euros a day in 2018 and is compulsorily added to your hotel bill.

The fee apparently goes towards financing and maintaining facilities within the area.

But surely what’s good for Europe can be good for the UK too, especially now we have left the EU.

So perhaps it’s something that should be given consideration.

With millions of visitors and hundreds of hotels in the district, it could raise more than £10 million a year. But such a local tax still requires Government legislation.

Other popular UK cities, including Edinburgh, are already exploring the potential so maybe it’s time for the Government to look into it.

After all, it’s the least it can do after stripping local authorities of funding.