| Comment | I think the reasoning on the student thing is they are only here for a short time, already pay a significant surcharge for their use of services like the NHS, they need a MUCH smaller breadth of services than a long-term resident, and they bring in actual billions into the local economy rather than imaginary billions. How much do you think they are going to pay exactly? There are 60,000 students in Glasgow and even assuming they all live in their own flats and all pay a high CT band it would be tens of millions and nowhere near billions.
Also Glasgow Uni does not bring in tens of thousands of international students. The whole student population is 27,000 and about 40% of those are international. Even using outdated figures from 2017 international students directly pump 2 Billion pounds into the Scottish economy so you would need to be careful that you don't sacrifice a good portion of that in the interest of a couple million in council tax.
There really isn't some unthought of money tap we can turn where billions of pounds are going to fall out. What we need is more purpose built student accommodation that will get students out of the private rental market but try advocating that and you will be shouted down in a heartbeat. There could maybe be some kind of smaller student rate or CT surcharge applied but only if the rest of the UK followed suit. |
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