The City of Edinburgh Council

North Bridge is fully reopening today in time for our summer festival season! 🎉 Both pavements and traffic lanes will be back in use. The Category A listed structure has undergone a complete restoration over the eight year project with contractor Balfour Beatty plc 🛠️

Transformation doesn’t just happen to finance teams. Great finance leaders make it happen. We're looking for an exceptional Finance Transformation and IT Partner. This is far more than a senior finance role. It’s an opportunity to help shape the future of finance and procurement at one of Scotland’s largest and most ambitious local authorities. We're embarking on a bold transformation to strengthening capability, embracing digital innovation, enabling better decision-making and support a shift towards more preventative, sustainable and outcome-focused public services. We’re looking for an inspirational leader who combines strategic financial expertise with digital innovation and can turn ambitious vision into lasting organisational change. If you want to shape strategy, influence how one of Scotland’s great cities delivers public services and leave a lasting impact, this could be your defining career move. Apply online https://lnkd.in/emZEC_Wp

Edinburgh’s Visitor Levy has officially come into effect! The UK’s first city-wide levy is projected to raise up to £50 million a year to invest in sustaining, supporting and enhancing Edinburgh’s world appeal as a place to visit and live. A 5% fee will now apply to the cost of all paid overnight accommodation in Scotland’s capital city, capped at five nights in a row. This small new contribution from overnight visitors will help improve the services and public spaces we all depend on, while better managing the effects of tourism and major events. The first full set of investment programmes using funding raised by the levy are worth over £90 million over the next three years. The exciting new projects across the city will help make Edinburgh a cleaner, greener and more welcoming place.

Edinburgh's Visitor Levy officially comes into effect tomorrow! The UK's first city-wide levy is projected to raise up to £50 million a year to invest in sustaining, supporting and enhancing Edinburgh’s worldwide appeal as a place to visit and live. A 5% fee will now apply to the cost of all paid overnight accommodation in Scotland’s capital city, capped at five nights in a row.   This small new contribution from overnight visitors will help improve the services and public spaces we all depend on, while better managing the effects of tourism and major events.   The first full set of investment programmes using funding raised by the levy are worth over £90 million over the next three years. These exciting new projects right across the city will help to make Edinburgh a cleaner, greener and more welcoming place.   We’ll soon be able to invest more into our many parks and greenspaces, and bring much-loved cultural venues such as the Royal High School and Leith Theatre back into use for the first time in decades – and much more. Find out more about the Visitor Levy on our website https://lnkd.in/eRDSYvC3

Before and after: look at the difference the Community Payback team has made at Crewe Road Gardens. We're looking for views on Community Payback Orders, which replaced community service in 2011, in particular the unpaid work part of CPOs. Share your thoughts https://lnkd.in/eKzR6v6W

Our Trading Standards Team has seized an estimated 58,000 counterfeit football jerseys and kits intended for distribution during the FIFA World Cup 2026. The haul follows a series of intelligence led operations with assistance from Police Scotland, alongside linked action by the National Trading Standards Intellectual Property team in Newport Trading Standards. It is estimated to be one of the largest ever seizures of its kind in the UK, weighing in at over nine tonnes and worth over £5million. https://lnkd.in/eRKCHkPA

Fantastic news for Leith - shortlisted for UK Town of Culture! 🎉

As Edinburgh prepares for the introduction of the Visitor Levy on Friday 24 July, we’re providing ongoing support to businesses in the visitor economy.   Our new Visitor Levy team has been visiting accommodation providers across the city, answering questions and helping to explain what businesses need to do to prepare for the levy.   We’ve also developed a range of materials for businesses to share with guests and direct them to the most up-to-date information about the scheme, which will soon be available.    Find out more https://lnkd.in/eSNevNHj

Edinburgh has a stark reality beneath its success: - 89,000 people living in poverty. - 18,000 of them children. - a 12-year life expectancy gap between the city's most and least deprived areas.    That's why the Edinburgh Partnership has launched a refreshed Community Plan which responds to challenges that have grown more urgent since 2022, from the housing emergency and cost of living crisis to concerns about exploitation, school readiness, and community cohesion.    The plan brings together over 40 organisations from the public, third, and private sectors to work towards the partnership’s vision of an “Edinburgh that is thriving, connected, inspired, and fair — where all forms of poverty and inequality are reduced.”    The refreshed plan has a clearer focus, directs action to where it is needed most, and sets out better ways to measure if real progress is being made.    Over 40 organisations came together to sharpen its response to poverty and inequality in the city's final two years of the plan. This included community roundtables through the Edinburgh Third Sector Interface and EaRN (Equality and Rights Network), a youth work forum, members of the Edinburgh Partnership Board, and the Edinburgh Poverty Commission.    Find out more about the refreshed plan on the partnership website https://lnkd.in/eApS5UY2 If you have any questions or would like to discuss how you or your organisation can get involved, please email us communityplanning@edinburgh.gov.uk. Find out which organisations are invested in community planning in Edinburgh https://lnkd.in/e6UKa7y6

Today, in partnership with Police Scotland, we’ve launched a new City Centre Policing Unit, supported by funding from the Edinburgh Visitor Levy.   We’ve worked closely with our partners at Police Scotland to support this new unit - ensuring that the people who live, work and visit Edinburgh feel safer and better supported – not only in our bustling central streets, but in neighbourhoods across the city by reducing demand on existing officer resources.   This partnership is one of the first Edinburgh Visitor Levy investments - demonstrating exactly what the levy is designed to do: reinvest in the services and infrastructure that keep our city welcoming, vibrant, and successful.