UK town with unique engineering marvel plans £1m a year tourist tax

Falkirk presently attracts implicit 800,000 unsocial visitors a year, with implicit 500,000 of those staying overnight - contributing to a visitant system that is present worthy £150 million

A UK municipality is mulling implicit the instauration of a tourer tax, with hopes it could rake successful much than £1 cardinal a year. 

A study presented to Falkirk Council's enforcement successful Scotland suggests that a 5% visitant levy connected tourer accommodation could assistance money services apt to beryllium utilized by tourists.

Currently, Falkirk draws successful implicit 800,000 unsocial visitors each year, with much than fractional of them staying overnight - contributing to a visitant system present valued astatine £150 million, arsenic reported by the Daily Record. The municipality boasts large attractions similar the Kelpies, drafting 850,000 visitors annually, and the Falkirk Wheel, which sees 500,000 visits per year.

The world’s lone rotating vessel lift, the Falkirk Wheel links the Forth & Clyde Canal to the Union Canal 35 metres above, allowing vessels to sail done the entity acknowledgment to a unsocial fusion of creation and engineering. Moving 1 vessel lone requires the the aforesaid powerfulness arsenic it takes to boil 8 kettles.

Visitor numbers are connected an upward trend, with the Kelpies aiming to deed 1 cardinal visits annually by 2028. With the caller opening of the Rosebank distillery successful Falkirk, plans for a caller municipality hallway and theatre, and a £3 cardinal creation parkland successful the pipeline done the Local Growth Deal, the assembly is assured the area's visitant system volition support expanding.

Last year, the Visitor Levy Act empowered Scottish section authorities to complaint radical staying successful paid accommodation wrong their jurisdiction. This would beryllium collected by businesses and passed onto the assembly for spending connected projects related to tourism and the visitant economy.

Projects could see thoroughfare cleansing and litter absorption successful places substantially utilized by visitors, parkland attraction and management, accrued accessible toilet provision, municipality dressing and festive lighting, events and taste programming. Four section authorities successful Scotland person said they volition instrumentality the levy successful the aboriginal - Stirling, Highland and Argyll and Bute - and Falkirk Council officials are intimately pursuing their progress.

At the moment, they are each proposing a 5% levy, and it is apt Falkirk Council would travel suit if they take to present one. It has been estimated that a levy could make revenues betwixt £1 cardinal and £1.5 cardinal earlier costs specified arsenic set-up and collection. However, the study cautions that this estimation of levy funds would request further probe and much in-depth investigation if the assembly proceeds with the scheme. The process volition instrumentality astatine slightest 2 years arsenic an 18-month announcement play is required.

In January Edinburgh made past by giving the greenish airy to Scotland's inaugural visitant levy, with councillors astatine the City of Edinburgh Council unanimously supporting the implementation of a complaint connected overnight stays.

Tourists bedding down successful the metropolis volition present beryllium taxable to a 5% interest per night, which is constricted to the archetypal 7 nights of their stay. The determination is anticipated to bolster the council's coffers by arsenic overmuch arsenic £50m annually. Jane Meagher, the person of the council, had antecedently hailed the levy arsenic a "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity" for metropolis investments.