Following its initial mention in the King’s Speech, the government yesterday introduced the Visitor Levy Bill to Parliament.
The bill further supports this government’s drive to devolve power and revenue raising powers to the regions, including Mayors across the country. The levy will be charged on a wide variety of short-stay accommodation, from hotels through to Airbnb and other self-catering accommodation. It will be set as a proportion of the cost of the accommodation, with revenues collected by mayoral authorities.
Matthew Morris, a Director at Nexus Planning in Bristol, notes:
“The Bill gives Mayors the chance to spend receipts from the levy across a wide variety of areas, including local events, tourism marketing, infrastructure development and local services.
It will give regional authorities the opportunity to collect potentially large sums of money to spend on social infrastructure and local events which the current planning obligations regime (via Section 106 contributions from development proposals) cannot fund.
“It is noteworthy that the Visitor Levy Bill comes immediately on the back of the publication of the government’s new High Streets Strategy, a document which specifically mentions the levy as an opportunity to support culture and tourism in town centres”.
Matthew goes on to note:
“Given our work at Nexus for local authorities on visitor accommodation and spending issues for Local Plans, it will be very interesting to see if the levy has an impact upon visitor numbers, the types of visitor accommodation required and spending levels from visitors on retail and food/beverage outlets. The government wants this levy to be a net gain for local areas and ‘growth in every postcode’, but time will tell whether this is an exercise in ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul’. It will also be interesting to see whether demand for visitor accommodation outside of the charging areas changes as a result of the new levy.
“It will also be very interesting to see whether mayoral authorities take up the government’s challenge of giving priority to town and city centres when deciding how to spend the forecast revenues”.
