The expansion of a government department following its adoption of an agency model has been revealed under Freedom of Information.

Following a strategic review the Department for Economic Development, then battling a £3.5m deficit, was relaunched as the Department for Enterprise in 2017.

The shake-up was meant to leave it with fewer staff and more focus.

A number of DED functions - including the Villa-Gaiety, the Job Centre, training services, energy policy and mining and minerals - were transferred to other departments.

Four public-private executive agencies were created at the same time - Business IoM, Digital IoM, Finance IoM and Visit IoM.

Some 50 full-time staff, about a quarter of the total, plus 200 casual contract staff at the Villa-Gaiety, were transferred but there were no compulsory redundancies.

Eight years on, and the number of staff employed by the DfE and its four agencies has grown.

It’s been revealed following an FoI request which sought information regarding the ‘structural and staffing expansion of the Department for Enterprise following the creation of its internal agencies’.

At the end of September 2017, the then DED had 171.89 full-time equivalent posts filled together with a large number (46.85 FTE) of vacant posts held prior to recruitment while the review was completed. That’s a total of 218.74.

At the end of November this year, the DfE had 193.50 full time equivalent (FTE) posts filled plus 21 vacancies - a total of 214.50.

In addition, the Business Agency employed 11 FTE, the Digital Agency 16.10 FTE, the Finance Agency 8.50 FTA and the Visit Agency 19.68 FTE.

That’s an extra 55.28 FTE, bringing the total to 269.78 FTE.

The FoI also gives figures for salary costs. The total for the DED in 2016-17 was £10,531,308 and for the DfE in 2024-25 it was £13,573,269.

The figure for 2016-17 has not been adjusted for pay increases applied to employees’ basic salary between 2017 and 2025.

Salary costs for the four executive agencies totalled more than £3.8m in 2024-25.

This figure is made up of £642,641 for Business IoM, £975,330 for Digital IoM, £781,165 for Finance IoM and £1,406,184 for Visit IoM.

The executive agencies sit alongside the department’s central functions of strategy and policy development, marketing, PR and comms, enterprise support, legislation, and the Locate Isle of Man team.

The FoI response gives a full list of filled and vacant positions in the department, its four agencies and the other areas that come under the DfE umbrella - the central registries and the Civil Aviation administration and Aircraft Registry, Motorsport and the Ship Registry.

In 2023, the DfE set for the first time a jobs target to create and fill 5,000 new jobs over 10 years.

The latest department plan shows that the number of private sector jobs grew last year by 960.

But a Digital Isle conference last month revealed a sharp drop in e-gaming jobs, down from a peak of 1,475 in 2022 to just 948 this year.