The Reporter is on holiday……so there will be limited news reporting today.
The council’s Policy & Strategy Committee meet this morning, and it seems from the agenda which you can read on the council’s website here, that Tourist Bed Tax is back. It was discussed previously, and vehemently objected to by capital hotel owners. But it is back, although under another name… Since it is not within the council’s remit to charge a Bed Tax, the way that they will try to get round it is to develop a Business Improvement District (BID) which would allow them to levy businesses such as hotels based perhaps on turnover or rateable value. The setting up procedure involves the businesses however, so it will have to be seen whether the hotels and other tourism based businesses in the capital agree to do so.
But if you have any stories you would like to share with us then please add them as comments below or indeed email them to us. We will investigate on our return. And we have some exciting things coming up in March…Some we will tell you about soon as they are currently top secret!
But one thing we can tell you is that on March 14th we are running a Live Webchat with the Edinburgh Conservative Group on The City of Edinburgh Council. If you have questions for them then please email them to us with the words Edinburgh Conservatives Live Webchat in the subject line.
