Cllr Liam Robinson wants Liverpool to follow Manchester in bringing in a new charge for visitors to the city
The city of Liverpool is “crying out for a tourist tax” according to council leader Liam Robinson. Cllr Robinson was speaking during a fringe event during the Labour Party Conference in the city.
During a discussion about how cities and city regions can boost growth, Cllr Robinson, who became leader of Liverpool City Council in May, said a tax paid by tourists coming to the city would help to address some of the council’s financial problems.
Tourist taxes are used in many cities around Europe. It means visitors staying in those areas have an extra levy imposed on them when they stay in those locations. The taxes are usually paid indirectly through accommodation providers or holiday companies.
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Liverpool has become a cultural and visitor powerhouse in recent years and Cllr Robinson said such a tax could help to address some of the financial crises being faced by the cash-strapped council. Last year Manchester became the first UK city to implement a new visitor charge. It means that overnight guests in city centre hotels or holiday apartments are charged £1 a night. The policy raised £2.8m in its first year.
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Cllr Robinson told a packed fringe event at the conference that he would like the city he leads to follow suit. He said: “This city is crying out for a tourist tax. Lets be honest, it makes sense. It won’t solve all of our financial problems of course but it will certainly help.”
The council leader also called on the new Labour government to introduce new multi-year council funding settlements to help struggling local authorities make financial plans for the years ahead. Short-term settlements have been a bugbear of town hall bosses for years.
He also wants to see a change in how funding formulas are worked out. He said: “We need funding based on needs and deprivation and we need to look further at fiscal devolution.”
Cllr Robinson was joined on the panel by Kim McGuinness, the Mayor of the North East. She hit out at the ‘hunger games’ style Levelling Up policy of the previous government. Councils and regional leaders were often angry at being forced to compete with one another for pots of funding under the policy, originally brought in by Boris Johnson.
Ms McGuinness told the event: “They made us compete for these one-off, crappy, biddable funds and it actually meant that the gap between the north and the south got bigger. What we are looking at now is single funding settlements for city regions.”
