Councillor Susan Brown, Leader of Oxford City Council said:
“Oxford has over half a million overseas visitors every year and even more people coming as tourists from within the UK to visit. Tourism is a very important part of our economy – 1 in every £6 spent in the city centre by debit or credit card comes from visitors to our city and it supports a very large number of jobs in Oxford.
“However, the level of tourism that we have means additional stress on our city. For instance, we need to provide more public toilets, more street cleaning and more litter collections. That is why we have campaigned for the ability to raise a tourist tax so that tourism can help pay for the additional burden placed on local taxpayers and also so that we can make improvements to our city for local residents and visitors.
“I therefore warmly welcome the government announcement, which makes it even more important that we all work together to get Mayoral Strategic Authority as soon as possible so that we can take advantage of this opportunity.”
