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The Herald Scotland
9 hours ago
- Business
- The Herald Scotland
What the row over Edinburgh's Tour de France bid really shows
However, that's just the start, as it were, and in 2015 then London Mayor Boris Johnson turned down the opportunity because total costs came in at around £30 million. But a local audit in Bilbao calculated their institutions benefitted from a return on investment ratio of 1:8.5, with €12.2 million generating €103.9 on the back of global exposure. If true, the £1.7 million Edinburgh Council is being asked to contribute for the Grand Départ to set off from the Castle Esplanade in 2027 sounds like good use of public money. It's obviously the view of Edinburgh's Chief Executive Paul Lawrence who, with a tight turnaround for a decision ─ the full agreement must be signed by this Monday ─ approved the spending in principle without first seeking formal council committee approval following detailed scrutiny. Edinburgh is hosting the race (Image: free) This week he was forced to admit it was 'inappropriate' but felt a positive informal discussion with political group leaders in October was enough to proceed. Detailed scrutiny is the theory and depends on who's on the committee and how the politics plays out, as far from a business boardroom as it's possible to imagine. SNP councillor Kate Campbell, never a fan of tourism and instrumental in disbanding the city's Marketing Edinburgh agency in 2019, told Tuesday's Finance committee that 'bringing a huge global event to Edinburgh in the middle of July, is not going to create additional value because … most people agree we are over-touristed at that time.' The arguments about process, decision-making and scrutiny aside, this gets to the nub of the issue, where a major opportunity to sell Edinburgh and Scotland as a destination ─ the racers won't just whizz around the city centre but head off to Dumfries ─ could be lost because of the political bias of anti-growth councillors. The Old Town is indeed chocka during the Festivals, but it is an exaggeration to claim Edinburgh has too many tourists the rest of the year, and despite the Usher Hall, Traverse and Lyceum at the heart of the International Festival, and minutes from Princes Street, in August Lothian Road is hardly La Rambla. It's ironic that Cllr Campbell's SNP-led administration campaigned hard for the introduction of the Tourist Tax, which it is hoped will fund the Grand Départ investment. Either they want visitors to fund an ever-expanding list of things the council can't fund, or they don't. The CEO has some form for cutting procedural corners, going back to 2019 in his previous role as Director of Place when the 2019 Edinburgh's Christmas market went ahead without planning permission, for which he also apologised. As that too involved a very narrow timetable, perhaps the Grand Départ row is another example of it being better to ask forgiveness than permission. But councillors must do the job they are elected to do ─ set policy and scrutinise ─ especially when there are members with as forensic attention to detail as my former colleague, the actuary Phil Doggart, who politely tore into officers on Tuesday. The bigger question is not so much if Mr Lawrence plays fast and loose with the system, but if the system itself is appropriate for a major city facing international competition, where quick decisions and delivery is essential. Given the time taken to progress major initiatives, like New Granton or West Town, the answer must be no. Sometimes risks are justified, such as in late 2022 when previous leader Cammy Day signed off support for the Forth Green freeport without committee scrutiny to avoid SNP and Green councillors derailing the ultimately successful application. The political buy-in, the access to funding and a sympathetic planning and regulatory framework needed for international competitiveness simply aren't there. Read more By comparison, England's regional mayors have significant executive powers. A retread of the Conservative 'Levelling Up' programme or not, the Labour Government has just announced nine English city region mayors will split a £15.6 billion investment in transport alone. The consequential funding boost for Scotland goes to the Scottish Government, in all probability swallowed by the growing social security bill, set to hit just short of £7 billion this year. Last December, the UK Government revealed plans to give the mayors in the seven biggest English regional conurbations new funding settlements to cover housing, regeneration, economic growth, and employment support, to keep pace with the devolved nations. But Scotland is not a city region, and Glasgow and Edinburgh are not powerful city regions with devolved power but effectively in the same league as Leicester and Southampton. Latest ONS data (from 2023) gives a misleading impression of economic health, comparing Edinburgh's gross domestic product per head of £69,809 with London's £69,077, more an illustration of a concentration of well-paid public sector jobs in a population 18 times smaller. Paul Lawrence at least wants to get things done, perhaps in the mould of the late Manchester CEO Howard Bernstein, but he had political permission to get Manchester moving. By comparison, Edinburgh was saddled with the previous CEO's vacuous 2050 City Vision, a colouring-in book where a proper economic strategy was needed, and despite four years' preparation was so poor it had to be relaunched just three years later in 2023. The Grand Départ shows Edinburgh has the assets for international competition but not the effective decision-making structures needed to build on it. Holding out a begging bowl to the Scottish Government while local politicians bicker about priorities ain't no way to run a bike race. John McLellan is a former Edinburgh Evening News and Scotsman editor. He served as a City of Edinburgh councillor for five years. Brought up in Glasgow, McLellan has lived and worked in Edinburgh for 30 years
Scotsman
20-06-2025
- Politics
- Scotsman
Secrecy involved in council funding helps no one
Britain's Simon Yates holds the trophy after winning the Giro d'Italia cycling race, in Rome, Sunday, June 1, 2025. (Gian Mattia D'Alberto/LaPresse via AP) For those of us who are TV fans of professional road cycling you can only imagine the possibility of the Grand Départ of le Tour de France coming to your home city. Sign up to our daily newsletter Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to Edinburgh News, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... I have seen le Tour in person before as the peloton flashed past a packed roadside crowd in Nantes, but le Tour in Edinburgh in 2027 is a whole new level of excitement. It should be a cause for celebration with a chance to glimpse road legends like Pogaĉar and Vingegaard or British favourites like the Yates brothers and all the razzamatazz of the event launch. Yet somehow the council has managed to make this controversial. The issue is that it takes money to host an event of this size and council officers seem to have wanted to keep that quiet. Hidden away in a report on the council's accounts was a proposal to put £1.7m aside to support hosting the event. This didn't appear clearly in the recommendations as a funding ask of councillors as is normal. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The plan seems to be to claw the money back from Tourist Tax gained while the event is here, but that only raises further questions. How can we suggest this when these funds are subject to consultation with a group representing business and the community set up under the Tourist Tax legislation? There are also huge demands on the proceeds of the tax with suggestions from councillors already spending the proceeds many times over. And that's before cultural, campaigning and business organisations have their say. To assuage any fears, councillors were issued with a last-minute briefing to explain the situation. Political group leaders had been consulted and had 'agreed' that we should push ahead with hosting the event. Having been part of that meeting, and my recollection may be poor, it was a general discussion of the benefits rather than scrutiny of costs or sources of funding. But that doesn't matter because the meeting was informal with no decision-making powers. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad I support the plan to host the Grand Départ. We can show off our city and the beauty of the surrounding countryside to a worldwide TV audience. This will give a huge boost to our local economy, especially for hard pressed hospitality businesses, and could have further benefits for years to come. All this while the bulk of the funding will come from another taxpayer pocket through the Scottish Government. But just like the gathering row over the Christmas Market funding I wrote about last week, the secrecy involved helps no one. It's time the council came clean and followed proper and open governance procedures when funding events.
Scotsman
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
Despite the pleas, Tourist Tax income can only go so far
In the past week the new Edinburgh Festival Fringe chief executive, Tony Lankester, made the latest bid for a chunk of Tourist Tax proceeds. Sign up to our daily newsletter Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to Edinburgh News, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Then comedian Matt Forde told a House of Commons Committee of impossible accommodation costs for working class comedians preventing them breaking though due to the 'Edinburgh Festival Model'. Matt Forde. Photo credit David Monteith-Hodge It seems we have a clash between left-wing politicians who wanted to sort 'over tourism' and the usually left of centre arts establishment complaining about the eminently predictable consequences. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The recent over-regulation of the Short Term Let Licensing has made tourist accommodation much scarcer in Edinburgh and pushed up costs, especially in August. It hasn't made the slightest difference to Edinburgh's 'housing emergency' and the cost of tourist accommodation will shortly jump further with the imposition of the Tourist Tax. So now Mr Lankester wants us to put all the Tourist Tax raised during the Fringe back into repaying the tax to performers and subsidising the pop-up venues that big promoters put on. The first of these is a circular argument and won't help in an accommodation market where supply is drying up and corporate hotel companies can't build rooms quick enough. The ability of the Fringe audience to find accommodation might become more of a problem first. The big promoters undoubtedly have costs putting on venues, but they increasingly recoup this in higher ticket prices and highly priced quinoa burger and beverage villages that discourage the spread of spend outwards to the local pubs and restaurants that are here all year round. They don't do this entirely philanthropically, there must be some profit to be made. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The promoters are also heavily built into the 'Edinburgh model' Matt Forde describes. But this model, that might see a performer booked for BBC TV or radio or a lucrative tour was chosen by those influential in booking comedy, not by Edinburgh or the Fringe. Mr Lankester did make two calls I'll support that would help residents, southern Scotland and visitors alike - the need for better mobile phone coverage in the Old Town and overnight train services to Glasgow each August. But these are things the mobile companies should be fixing and ScotRail should be enterprising enough to resolve if it makes financial sense, not a case for public subsidy. I suspect a grubby compromise will be found on the Tourist Tax spend. But really, the left on the council and the left-wing Scottish Parliament establishment need to decide what their policy priorities are. Right now, the Tourist Tax is trying to please all audiences at once and it just won't raise enough money to do that. Cllr Iain Whyte, Leader of the Conservative Group
