Highland housing crisis cannot wait

Every single second that passes without a visitor levy, the Highland Council area loses out on critical funds that could be directly reinvested into social housing and public services.

Councils all over Scotland are going to be reaping the benefits of their own visitor levies within the next 18 months, but the Highlands will be missing out on millions of pounds of investment while the Highland Council continues to delay what we already know is possible. 

At the start of September, Highland Council opened yet another public consultation on the visitor levy. Last time they did this, thousands of us spoke up and demanded a visitor levy in the Highlands. The delays since then have been frustrating, and the tourism lobby have been fighting hard to fearmonger.

We need to do it again to make sure we drown out the scare tactics and make the council use this opportunity to harness funds for social housing. 

We have until 30th November to respond and we have to do these two steps to make our response as strong as possible.

1. Endorse our response to the consultation by entering your details. 

2. Fill out the consultation yourself here - the council says individual responses are what they'll listen to most, so we need to make sure as many of us as possible do this too! We've made a guide for you to follow along while filling it out to make it as easy as possible.