A question to tax councillors - John McLellan

As that’s the day after the re-run Colinton/Fairmilehead by-election, it could mean the two newly-elected councillors will need to get up to speed rather quickly as the meeting is at 2pm and the result will only have been announced about an hour before.

And it’s already shaping up to be a controversial meeting, with the Federation of Small Businesses pointing out that the council’s outline proposals for spending what could be around £40m annual revenue are at odds with the legislation.

It might sound reasonable to put some of it into affordable housing, but the deal for turning hotels and guest houses into tax-gatherers is that the cash is spent on ways to benefit the visitor economy. Yet B&B owners are being frozen out of the proposed oversight committee.

It’s not too difficult to argue that staff working in tourism need somewhere to live, but that’s stretching the definition and it exposes a fundamental danger that the revenue just disappears into the council coffers to boost political slush funding.

So-called “participatory funding”, where some of the money is set to go, is little better than a means for elected representatives to grab cash for pet projects.

And other councils will probably complain about Edinburgh’s unfair advantage of having a castle and a festival to attract tourists, so pressure will mount from other areas for the benefit to be spread.