Your Voice: Visitor Levy
We want to give communities across the city a direct say in how we invest part of the income from the Edinburgh Visitor Levy.
Each of the Council’s 17 electoral wards are set to benefit from a share of £1.7m over three years, with residents directly deciding how to spend the funds in their local ward via an online voting portal.
This will give local people the opportunity to help shape ideas and opportunities that matter the most to them, creating projects that reflect their community’s unique needs and aspirations, and share the benefits of Edinburgh’s tourism economy to the whole of the city.
About Your Voice: Visitor Levy
Your Voice: Visitor Levy is a Participatory Budgeting (PB) process which gives communities or groups of citizens the chance to suggest ideas and decide how public money is spent, normally by voting.
There will be 17 different community funds across the City - one for each of the Council’s electoral wards. This means the benefits are spread across the whole city. The average fund per ward is £100,000 over three years, although this varies between £82,000 and £121,000, with areas of greater economic need getting a slightly larger share.
Your Voice: Visitor Levy has three stages:
- Idea generation: Communities and residents will say how they want the money to be spent in their area.
- Project proposals: Community-focused organisations and charities will make funding applications in response to the ideas and priorities generated by local people.
- Decision-making: Residents will vote to decide which specific proposals they want to see funded in their community.
What we’re looking for
As with all funds raised by the levy, Your Voice money must be spent in a way that also benefits visitors to the city. You can read more about how we’re investing the levy’s funds in projects across the city.
We’re looking for ideas that provide both a community and a visitor benefit. Potential projects could include:
- Community and public art
- Cultural events and performances
- Sport events and physical activities
- Improvements to parks and public spaces
- Heritage and community history projects
These are just suggestions, and everyone who takes part will be given the opportunity to suggest other types of projects as well. Ideas could be for young people or older people, they could take place throughout the year or be one-time events – as long as there’s a benefit to visitors to the city as well.
Get involved
We’re interested in as many of Edinburgh’s residents taking part as possible. After summer 2026, local people will have the opportunity to say what types of projects they’d like to see in their community.
We will compile the feedback for different parts of the City and ask for community groups and charities to apply for funds to deliver on these ideas. Once we have the applications, we’ll ask communities to vote on which they want to see happen.
Suggesting ideas and voting will mainly be online, but we’ll make sure there are ways for people to access this in-person in libraries or other public buildings.
Who benefits
Money from the Your Voice funds will go to community groups and charities to deliver projects in different parts of the City, based on the feedback we get from local people. In the first year, organisations will be able to apply for up to £10,000 each to deliver these projects.
Your Voice: Visitor Levy is happening across Edinburgh, but split into different funds for each Council ward. This ensures there will be projects funded in different communities across the City. Although everything will happen at the same time, different communities can choose different things for their area.
You can find the Council ward you live in.
Key dates
- From September: The first stage will start after the summer when people across the city will be asked for their ideas and suggestions.
- From November: Community groups and charities will be asked to submit applications for projects
- From February: Residents will be asked to vote on which projects they would like to see happen in their community.
- From May: The projects chosen by residents in each council ward area will start ahead of summer next year.
Next steps
We will run the programme again in 2027/28, but with more money and for longer projects. Our work in 2026/27 will help us make improvements to how we deliver it in future.
The current Visitor Levy scheme is expected to be reviewed in 2029, and the result of that review will inform how all the work related to the Levy develops.
