The ’Locate’ initiative aimed at attracting people to come and live and work in the island is doing a good job, argued Caren Pegg, president of the Chamber of Commerce, at the Topical Talks gathering.

She said: ’We should not just be marketing to London. We do have strong links with the capital and there is a captive market there but I believe strategically we need to be looking beyond the UK as well.’

Tim Groves of Black Grace Cowley claimed high net worth people don’t have to have ’rock star status’.

He said they should be talking about attracting economically active people whatever their status.

He argued that they should be looking at it from a micro level - ’by micro I mean getting into the northern counties, Cheshire, Yorkshire, Lancashire, getting into the Chambers of Commerce and partnerships with them. It is getting to know the individuals advising them as to where they can go to. It is selling the island with aspects of safety and security, open space, all these things that people don’t have in the UK in the same amount of abundance that we have.

’It is getting a focused, strategic campaign and saying to we are going to target you and we need to see tangible results.

’And those results will lead to benefits for this island.’

Lawrie Hooper, MHK for Ramsey, said the Locate strategy was pretty much as Tim Groves described.

He said it looks at specific countries and regions and the messaging being put out was targeted differently depending on the area.

So, for instance, safety and security ranks higher on the lists of priorities in South Africa.

’Whereas if you are marketing in the north west of England the campaign might target more on salary levels or the quality of life or the access to schools.’

He stressed: ’The UK market is a big market but it is not the only one by any stretch. There’s South Africa and the Far East as well where work is going on.’

Mr Hooper added: ’There was an interesting figure last summer last year about 700 people, over a three or four month period, who were relocating here.

(In December we reported that more than 700 people had moved to the island for contractual reasons since the Covid-19 pandemic began. Policy and Reform Minister Ray Harmer was asked by Bill Shimmins (Middle) how many people have gained residency since March 4 by purchasing property in a House of Keys sitting. Mr Harmer stated that 721 people had taken up Manx residency for contractual reasons, which can include coming to the island to work or if they have a mortgage here.)

Bang for our buck

Mr Hooper told the Topical Talks meeting: ’From my perspective I think we get a lot of bang for our buck actually.

’We spend a lot less money than Jersey do on their promotional marketing yet the level of success we get is actually disproportionate to the amount of money we spend.’

Paul Hotchkiss said it was ’incredibly powerful’ that the island is a safe haven.

Businessman Stephen Bradley said he would look at the opportunities that marketing manages to bring in.

But he argued there were issues that needed to be fixed.

’We have a safe space and a great place to live and work and we have to fix how we land those opportunities.’

Mr Hotchkiss said in his experience dealing with many businesses wanting to relocate to the island ’nine times out of 10 they fall down because we haven’t understood the problems they are facing in getting out of the countries they are in. It looks really good, come to the Isle of Man, it’s a wonderful place and then ’’oh we did not realise, for example, that we were going to have to pay massive taxes to get out’’.

’We need to recognise and accept that this can be a problem and then try to fix it by changing our own laws to make sure that we can facilitate that move.

’That’s something we need to focus on.’

Stephen Bradley said he had been surprised by the amount of regulatory and legislative work that the attorney general’s office undertakes.

He said Covid provided huge challenges with the amount of regulations that needed to be adapted, adopted, moved or changed.

He said: ’The key, perhaps in business development terms, is that we perhaps use the private sector to work on those new business regulations.

’Because when day to day becomes all encompassing nothing new happens and it is about how we break that down.’

pressure

Lawrie Hooper MHK, said the attorney general’s office was under a lot of pressure working ’almost round the clock to be honest’ on the emergency response to Covid.

Tax expert Paul Hotchkiss stressed the importance of having a ’unified direction’ and a ’strategic vision about what we want the island’s economy to be, what we want to look like and how we are going to present ourselves’.

Mr Hooper said he sits on a group which has commissioned an economic strategy review.

He said: ’Let’s take a step from where we are and actually we need to have that strategic vision of where we are going.

’But what I have found over the years is that you can get tied down and we need to make sure everything is all aligned.

’Now what that means is you never get anything done. So you produce four or five reports, strategies and documents and everything looks great on paper.

’But actually you have not done anything. You are too afraid to act because it might not align with that future strategy that has not yet been published.

’So I think there has to be a balance - yes we need a strategic vision and we all need to be pushing in the same direction. But equally if things come up we should not be afraid of doing it that day and see where it goes.

’It’s all about being adaptable so we don’t put businesses on hold and put potential new opportunities on hold.’

Manx Telecom chief executive Gary Lamb said he had been in quite a number of Topical Talks sessions and ’there is always a lot of talk about some great ideas from business people and suggestions for dealing with some of these issues.

’But it seems to me that it is always the same problems and the same things that don’t seem to change significantly. I guess the question I ask myself is: ’’How are we going to do things differently? Because I can imagine in a year or two’s time, there will be the same conversations that I have certainly heard for the last two or three years in some of these sessions.

’We talk about this so much in the business sector but we just don’t seem to be able to do things differently as we suggest we should.’

Mr Lamb said he had often talked about government working well with the private sector and perhaps there is an opportunity to explore how this succeeds.

’I do feel that someone needs to do something a bit more radical and we need to find a way of solving these problems.’

Mr Hooper said the business agency was set up by the Department for Enterprise with the aim of getting the private sector input straight into government decision making.

He said the agency had had a variety of successes and failures.

He added the private sector was where the wealth generation happens and where the entreprenerial vision is.

Caren Pegg said: ’One of Chamber’s priorities is to push for more joined-up government.

next big thing

Lawrie Hooper said the process about what the ’next big thing’ is going to be should start with the private sector.

He said that things had improved over the years and that industry was ’not frightened to stand up and tell you (the government) what’s what. That’s absolutely the right thing because that is the only way government is going to change is if people stand up and say: ’’You have got a problem here and it needs fixing’’.’

Paul Hotchkiss said: ’We talk about what might be the next big thing but in a number of areas we haven’t quite got the basics right.’

As an example he said people would not believe how complicated the tax issues could be when employees come to work on the island from foreign countries in terms of which country has taxing rights and potential for double taxation if individuals do not cease residence from their country of departure.

’Some of these risks can be managed by doing something as simple as making sure the employment contracts last for a minimum period.

’We should concentrate on getting the local nuts and bolts right whilst simultaneously with focusing on the big picture.’

Caren Pegg said a selling point of the island was that it should not be overly bureaucratic.