Tourist tax must help the ‘City of Festivals’ stay ahead

Composer Richard Lewis, who drew up plans for a cultural levy, says the funds should be used to support creative industries

It was heartening to see recently that the principle of a tourist tax or cultural levy – something I was leading on during my five years in office in Edinburgh – has now finally been accepted by the Scottish Government in their most recent budget.

This is no little due to the efforts of the present leader of Edinburgh council who has tirelessly worked to advance the cause – even during a time in which there are many other challenges facing his administration, largely as the result of the continuing austerity agenda being advanced by the Westminster Government.

Now, during my time as cultural convener for Edinburgh, it was almost unanimously agreed across the parties – the Tories being the lone, if unsurprising, exception – that some sort of tourist levy simply had to be pursued. Whether it was called the transient visitor levy (TVL), the cultural levy or tourist tax, it was widely agreed that the need for such a tax – particularly in an age of austerity where less and less money was going to areas such as culture, cultural infrastructure and events – was an urgent necessity if the city was to stave off inevitable decline due to the running down of its cultural and events spaces.

And let’s not forget, it is culture and events which are responsible for much of Edinburgh’s wealthy and signifies its ‘USP’ to the outside world. We are members of the ‘World Cites Forum’ largely by virtue of the strength of our festivals and events reputation, and our overseas image is squarely as that of a ‘festival city’. And yet, despite this, spending to maintain this reputation has been largely cosmetic over the last 20 years – restoring the Usher Hall, Assembly Rooms and some of the city museums and libraries – with no major new cultural piece of infrastructure being built since perhaps the Traverse Theatre in the 1960s.

Meanwhile, major structural work will be required on the King’s Theatre, the Central Library, the Lyceum and Traverse theatres, the Filmhouse, the Leith Theatre and the council museums and galleries. And that’s before one begins to consider plans for new venues – something of a necessity in a city in which the vast majority of our cultural estate was built pre-1945 and where, globally, the cultural and entertainment world has changed beyond recognition since then.

Yet, as the grim logic of austerity has continued since 2008, fewer and fewer funds have been allocated to address these concerns. And while it has never been easy in the political world to make an argument for a cultural or entertainment venue when schools and health and social care are continually crying out for further investment, over the last decade this has become nigh on impossible. And this at a time when the physical demands on our buildings are reaching breaking point.

Therefore, with both national and local government finances only likely to deteriorate further with Brexit, the cultural levy has now become a necessity. For only a couple of pounds on each hotel room per night, the city can create a fund which allows the sort of sustainable planning to the cultural sector that is standard in much of Europe and the rest of the world.

The plan I submitted to government in 2016 for a cultural levy was designed to mirror the council’s housing revenue account (HRA) in being a resource specifically ringfenced for cultural and event spending – and for that purpose alone. It would be divided between infra-