Visitor Levy Bill - the Trust takes a closer look

Will the Visitor Levy Bill benefit Scotland’s wild places?

One of the main reasons visitors travel to rural Scotland is to admire and appreciate the natural environment. This includes visiting Scotland’s wild places. The management and facilitation of visitor access comes at a cost, often borne by rural and sparsely populated communities, landowners and managers.

In 2019 we considered whether a proposed tourist tax could help fund investment in managing visitor impacts on Scotland’s wild places. At the time, the Scottish Government was consulting on introducing a visitor levy and we welcomed the possibility of a levy as a way to direct investment into the protection of wild places (see article here).

We subsequently undertook research during Autumn 2020, publishing a report in spring 2021. The research was based on detailed discussions with people living and working in Scotland’s sparsely populated remote north-west to understand the pressures and opportunities from the growing number of visitors each year. Those conversations revealed that people on the frontline, dealing with visitor pressures, thought the existing visitor infrastructure was inadequate.

On a visitor levy specifically, we reported that ‘Several interview participants emphasised the potential of introducing a transient visitor levy, also known as a tourism tax, as an additional contribution charged to people visiting an area as short-term visitors. While such a levy could be used to fund local authority expenditure on tourism-related infrastructure and activities, the interviewees stressed that the funds raised from a visitor levy should be spent locally in the area, where the funds would have been raised.’  

The present Visitor Levy Bill should go some way to helping Local Authorities raise funds for investing in facilities, such as car parks, paths, toilets, visitor information points, that would be used by visitors. However, we believe it may be a missed opportunity when it comes to raising funds to help manage the negative impacts of visitors on wild places.

As drafted, the Bill requires that Local Authorities, before introducing a levy scheme, notify the public and consult on their plans. In doing so they must publish an outline of the scheme, the scheme’s objectives (these must relate ‘to developing, supporting or sustaining facilities or services which are substantially for or used by persons visiting the scheme area for leisure purposes’) and an assessment of the impacts of the proposal in the authority’s area. Whether the funds raised are spent locally - as requested by some of those we interviewed during our research - may depend on the objectives of the scheme and how the outcome of the consultation.

This process of setting and refining objectives may also determine the extent to which the natural environment comes to benefit from the scheme. It takes a bit of creative imagination for wild places to be understood as ‘facilities or services which are substantially for or used by persons visiting the scheme area for leisure purposes’ and therefore perhaps it will be unlikely that scheme objectives will reflect the need to protect wild places. However, given just how many people visit Scotland each year for its scenery, wild coastline, hills and mountains, it seems short-sighted for objectives of any visitor levy scheme to ignore the protection of wild places.

The Bill is currently at Stage 1 and before the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee. This Committee has opened a ‘call for views’ which will close on 15 September 2023.

If you would like to be a voice for wild places, you can -  by responding to the ‘call for views’, highlighting the need for funds raised to help local communities and landowners manage the negative impacts of visitors on wild places. Afterall, these are the places that result in thousands of visitors to Scotland in the first place, so a visitor levy seems like an appropriate way to request visitors to contribute towards taking care of them!