Spend programmes
The initial levy spend programmes were formally agreed at a special meeting of the City of Edinburgh Council on Thursday 12 February 2026.
The majority of the projects sit within three investment programmes, as agreed by Council in January 2025:
- City Operations and Infrastructure
- Culture, Heritage and Events
- Destination and Visitor Management
All investment streams will be formally reviewed alongside the overall scheme in 2029.
City Operations and Infrastructure
These projects will be delivered through two key funds:
- The Well-Kept City Fund will help to revitalise the city through a range of Clean, Green, Safe, Well-Maintained and Sustainable Infrastructure themed projects.
- The City Transformation Fund involves ambitious projects to renew and restore key areas of Edinburgh, both in the city centre and across the city.
Well-Kept City Fund
Clean: Making sure the city’s streets and open spaces are cleaned and kept to a high standard by
- upgrading and replacing bins in our busiest areas,
- Assisting private businesses with tackling graffiti,
- and funding additional operations services for the city centre (waste, cleansing, patrols).
Green: Protecting the quality of our green spaces through effective maintenance and managing the impacts of visitors by
- developing a dedicated team to manage and maintain Premier Parks, engaging with members of the public,
- increasing the parks repair budget and boosting the number of park rangers across the city,
- providing additional funding to sustainably develop and manage the city’s Premier Parks as visitor destinations,
- greening the city through additional planting and trees across the city, including floral gateways in town centres, the city centre and key approach roads,
- and supporting the Water of Leith Conservation Trust to deliver improvements required at the Water of Leith on areas such as the Visitor Centre and the Dean Valley, alongside general pathways and accessibility improvements.
Safe: Providing extra resource to allow residents and visitors to feel safer in the city centres, town centres and other busy areas by
- improving lighting and safety in the Twelve Closes project in the Old Town,
- investing in increased CCTV by the 2028/29 financial year,
- replacing the National Barrer Asset on the Royal Mile with a permanent Hostile Vehicle Mitigations (HVM) structure.
Well-Maintained: Maintaining Edinburgh’s streets, public spaces and public infrastructure to a world-class standard by
- speeding up the Setted Streets renewal programme,
- providing new and upgraded public toilets,
- investing in our Summertime Streets programme to keep our city centre moving and safe at our busiest time of the year.
Sustainable Infrastructure: Making sure the city’s public transport and events spaces are protected responsibly and used to their best by
- improving key footways, including South Bridge, Rose Street and town centre pavements across the city,
- and contributing to the development of the Coach Plan to better manage coach operations in Edinburgh while improving public safety and enhancing the visitor experience.
City Transformation Fund
Old Town Streets
- Delivering public realm improvements in Hunters Square to improve access and help to reduce anti-social behaviour (with the potential to combine with investment in the Tron Kirk),
- installing hostile vehicle mitigations at Cockburn Street,
- and creating road safety improvements on the Cowgate.
Cramond Foreshore
- Bringing improvements to the car park, safety, accessibility, capacity and active travel connections, public toilets and changing places.
Portobello Promenade
- Developing a masterplan for Portobello Promenade including a high-quality public realm, accessible toilets, changing places and play facilities.
Culture, Heritage and Events
These spend programmes will invest in Edinburgh’s culture, heritage and events scene to deliver lasting benefits for visitors and residents. We want to make sure Edinburgh remains a vibrant, inclusive cultural capital city.
We are delivering this funding through three key programmes:
- Cultural Organisations - Edinburgh Open 365: Investing in and supporting Edinburgh’s cultural organisations to innovate and generate new world class content for the whole city, all year round. This will be achieved by
- supporting local talent,
- spreading cultural activity across the city,
- and ensuring culture remains accessible, affordable and embedded in communities.
- Our Cultural Infrastructure: Investing in Edinburgh’s cultural and heritage locations to secure their futures as high-quality visitor destinations, green, creative and well maintained, spaces.
- Large Scale Cultural Capital Fund: Completing major transformation projects in line with our Culture and Tourism Strategies.
Cultural Organisations: Edinburgh Open 365
Strategic Partners
- Increasing funding to cultural organisations already regularly funded by the Council, to support resilience, innovation and better partnership working.
- This will help to provide long term stability and renewed investment for key cultural organisations, allowing them to innovate with more confidence.
Events Investment Fund (including festival opening/closing events)
- Supporting large sporting/cultural events and additional smaller sporting/cultural events in the city each year.
- This will include reintroducing popular, free events in the city, including the festivals’ much-loved opening and closing events.
- The fund will allow us to animate the city (and attract visitors) beyond peak seasons, spreading events and using spaces beyond the city centre.
Accessible & Affordable Culture Fund
- Offering support for artists and performers with a focus on creating more accessible and affordable cultural activities.
- This will help to reduce the barriers to creating and experiencing culture.
CEC programming Fund (Incl. Ross Bandstand activity)
- Delivering ambitious, high quality cultural programming in venues and public spaces to provide a vibrant and inclusive offer for visitors and residents. This will include bandstand programming, major exhibitions and diverse live music.
- This fund will directly support Ross Bandstand events between April and September, with a core focus on ‘plug and play’ community events that are free to the public, including mid-scale contemporary music, theatre and cinema.
Our Cultural Infrastructure
Small Scale Capital Fund: Accessibility and Sustainability for Venues
- Providing essential funding to help cultural and heritage venues become more accessible, environmentally sustainable and fit for the future.
Heritage Asset Investment
- Supporting the care, repair and investment of the city’s heritage estate in the UNESCO World Heritage Site
- This fund will specifically cover the restoration of historic graveyards and complete the art elements of the 12 Closes Project.
- The fund will also involve working closely with Edinburgh World Heritage to invest in training and apprentice programmes to nurture unique conservation skills for local workers.
Public Art
- Maintaining and expanding a public art estate that reflects Edinburgh's diverse stories, strengthens local identity and creates inclusive, meaningful public spaces.
- This fund includes support for Street Art, and developing a memorial project that reflects Edinburgh’s role in colonialism and the slave trade.
Large Scale Cultural Capital Fund
Leith Theatre
- Restoring a much loved, historic venue to create a year-round culture and live music space, expanding cultural opportunities beyond the city centre.
Market Street Arts Hub
- Revitalising the City Art Centre to create a unified destination for contemporary visual arts with upgraded galleries, learning, studio, and public-facing spaces.
Old Royal High School
- Contributing to the transformation of the iconic listed building into a world-class, accessible national centre for music, shaped by community engagement and open to all.
- The redevelopment will create a cultural venue in a new part of the city centre, featuring performance and rehearsal spaces, a recording studio, learning facilities, a cafe, event spaces and public gardens with panoramic city views.
Destination and Visitor Management
We want to make sure people across Edinburgh feel the benefits of the Visitor Levy by strengthening awareness and demand for the city’s diverse and year-round offer.
These projects will help us to
- better manage the impacts of tourism across the city,
- support net zero and fair work initiatives in the tourism sector,
- and deliver an enhanced experience for residents, visitors, businesses and workers.
We are achieving this through two spend programmes:
- Destination Marketing and Management: Strengthening awareness of Edinburgh’s diverse, year-round offer by inspiring visitors and residents to explore beyond the well-known attractions in the city centre, leading to more balanced visitor numbers and impact around the city, throughout the year.
- Industry Sustainability and Fair Work in Tourism: Providing direct support for businesses in the visitor economy to improve economic and environmental sustainability, fair work and innovation and help the sector to be more resilient, ethical and ready for the future.
Destination Marketing and Management
Responsible Tourism and Visitor Dispersal
- Investing in positioning and marketing the city during the off-season, so we can encourage visitors to arrive beyond the traditional peak periods.
- This will support sustainable, year-round economic activity, employment, and service for everyone in Edinburgh.
Destination Edinburgh - Global Reputation and Positioning
- Making sure Edinburgh’s global positioning reflects the city’s strengths, values, personality and future ambitions.
- Investing in Convention Edinburgh to ensure that Edinburgh can secure sector-aligned business events vital for driving the local economy, particularly during off-peak seasons, by bringing in international and national delegates who contribute to the city's knowledge economy.
- This help the city remain competitive on the world stage, while making sure tourism also works for residents, businesses and visitors across the city.
Resident and Community Engagement
- Encouraging everyone who lives in Edinburgh to enjoy more of the outstanding nature, world heritage, unique neighbourhoods and local communities on their doorstep.
- This will be partly driven by developing and expanding resident focused initiatives like the Resident Rewards Edinburgh scheme.
Events Investment Fund
- Further animating the city with events throughout the year, both to support our existing offering, and bring new events to Edinburgh
- These would balance demand across the calendar for visitors and communities across the city.
- This will include reintroducing popular, free events in the city, including the festivals’ much-loved opening and closing events.
Visitor Economy team
- Building a skilled and dynamic Visitor Economy team to deliver all the activities across this funding stream.
- This team will be well equipped to deliver on the city’s destination management ambitions and provide long term benefits for residents and visitors alike.
Industry Sustainability and Fair Work in Tourism
This investment will enable businesses to adopt greener practices, embed Fair Work principles, create greater job security and enhance the overall quality of Edinburgh's offer for visitors and those working in the sector.
Tourism Excellence
- Strengthening the foundations of Edinburgh’s tourism sector and helping us to deliver Edinburgh’s 2030 Tourism Strategy ambitions.
Future Tourism Development - support and innovate
- Working to make sure Edinburgh's tourism industry is resilient, ethical and ready for the future.
- We will deliver this with a focus on net zero and fair work, digital systems and skills development for the sector.
Other funds
Sustain funding
A portion of the levy funding is being assigned to sustaining existing Council services to address the additional impact that visitors have on the city. This includes additional resources to maintain the city throughout the year, and ensure the safety of visitors as well as residents during large-scale events.
By using a portion of Visitor Levy funding towards sustaining, supporting and developing these services, we are better placed to continue to deliver statutory services through standard Council Tax, including education, health and social care, and providing accommodation to the homeless.
Participatory Budgeting
A portion of income generated from the levy will also be used to support new participatory budgeting (PB) activity.
PB involves communities making decisions on how public money is spent. There are a variety of ways PB can be used to allocate spending, and work is currently underway to develop this. Public engagement took place towards the end of 2025, with over 230 people engaging in one-to-one discussions, cross-partner meetings, and group presentations.
The feedback is now being used to develop options for a city-wide model, which will be considered by councillors at the Culture & Communities Committee in May 2026.
Housing and Tourism Mitigation Fund
This fund could help deliver 472 affordable homes between 2026/27 and 2028/29, with more than 75% potentially available for social rent.
Making more social rent homes available would allow households currently using unsuitable temporary accommodation, such as bed and breakfasts, to access more appropriate settled accommodation. This would return B&Bs to their intended use for shorter-term guests.
We expect the Fund would support three new build developments - at Fountainbridge, Meadowbank and Coatfield Lane in Leith - with around 361 social rented homes and around 111 mid-market rent homes.
Additional projects
At the special meeting of the Council on 12 February 2026, it was also agreed that the Edinburgh Visitor Levy Advisory Forum will also consider the following projects in 2027/28 (subject to agreement in the relevant Council committees):
Development of Princes Street and George Street
- A report to the Transport and Environment committee will set out options to deliver further public realm improvements in the city centre, including both Princes Street and George Street, and how they should be prioritised.
The Causey Project
- Delivering public realm improvements as part of the local project to create a new public space in the Southside.
Portobello Kilns
- Refurbishing and promoting the historic Kilns in Portobello as a tourist attraction.
Customs House
- Focusing on restoration work to enable Customs House to be ready for the next stage of redevelopment. The long term vision is to redevelop the site into an open, accessible, mixed use community and creative hub.
Tron Kirk
- Scottish Buildings Heritage Trust are currently developing the long term vision of the Kirk. The plans aim to bring forward substantial restoration and repair of the historic building while improving accessibility. This project could potentially be supported alongside the agreed plans to deliver public realm improvements in Hunters Square to improve access and help to reduce anti-social behaviour.
Lost Shore and Edinburgh International Climbing Centre
- Assessing transport infrastructure to enhance the accessibility of the site.
Citywide network of nature footpaths and walkways
- Improving footpaths and walkways to ensure protection of nature paths while promoting health and wellbeing.