Ramsey Commissioners have appointed a new town clerk and chief executive.

Tim Cowin officially took on his new roles at the start of this month after shadowing Peter Whiteway, the previous clerk, who had been in the position since 2002.

Mr Cowin said: ’I’m really pleased to be here. I like Ramsey and I’m really looking forward to hopefully making a difference.

’Peter Whiteway has done a sterling job over the past 19 years, and I look forward to building on the great work that he has done and wish him the very best in his retirement.’

The chairman of Ramsey Commissioners, Alby Oldham, said: ’On behalf of the commission I am pleased to welcome Tim as the new town clerk and look forward to working alongside him. I would like to thank Peter for the diligent work he has undertaken and wish him a happy retirement.’

Mr Cowin felt the role was ’going really well’ and said he was ’just getting his feet under the table’, adding: ’There’s a lot of projects. Peter’s been great in doing a lot of explaining to me how things work and it’s been a great opportunity to shadow him for that month to see how things work and fit together.

’I’m enjoying it so far but there’s obviously a lot to learn, so I’m going home at the end of the day and my brain is feeling like it’s had a good workout but I’m hoping that I can continue with the good work Peter has done and continue to make sure things are well organised.’

Mr Cowin was educated at Albert Road School and Ramsey Grammar School before studying mechanical engineering at Coventry University.

For 14 years he lived and worked in England and Spain in the automotive sector. He returned to the island in 2006 to live in Ramsey.

Having worked in Ramsey as a director of a construction project management company, he then worked for the Department of Infrastructure for eight years.

’I’ve been working for the DoI most recently and so there were a lot of similarities in terms of the way that things were done there, working with political members in the DoI, to how they’re done here in Ramsey. There’s lots of new things, but also lots of similarities,’ Mr Cowin added.

When asked what attracted him to the role, Mr Cowin had a list.

He said: ’There’s a few things which really attracted me. I went to school here in Ramsey and I have lived here as a kid. I went away, worked in the UK, and I was in Spain for a bit too.

’It was just one of those ones that we decided we would really like to come back to Ramsey - this was about 15 years ago.

’The job opportunity is a really exciting one. I’ve worked with Peter quite a lot when I was at the DoI. I thought I’d have a go at that work in the town that I have grown up in.’

He thought there were important differences about working in the Isle of Man compared with the UK, adding: ’I think a bit of our work here in the Isle of Man, particularly Ramsey, is working with all the different characters that you know and recognise and have come across in numerous different ways in your life.

’I think the people side of things is what makes it really interesting.’

A town clerk is a public official who takes charge of records for a town and oversees proceedings. The position is varied, covering a number of areas, and is difficult to define.

The clerk said: ’I’ve got two pieces to my job. I need to do my town clerk roles, which are working really closely with the commissioners, working with them in terms of the items that they need to be thinking about working on.

’And then I also need to be really looking at the staff here at the town hall and understanding what they do, understanding who they are, all of those sorts of things. I’ll then look at the town clerk side of things and see what I can do to be of the utmost help to the commissioners in their work.’

Ramsey Commissioners is undertaking its rate-setting process which should be finished by the end of January.

’My first project is working with the members and looking at what we’re going to do in terms of setting a rate.

’It’s difficult because obviously, we’ve got things like inflation going on and the cost of things is generally going up but we need to make sure that our budget shows our costs for the coming year,’ Mr Cowin said.

’We’ve also got quite a number of projects that we would like to do so we’re looking at those.

’The members have been really good in terms of looking at those projects and thinking about what we should be doing and what we can afford to do.’

A key project Mr Cowin will be involved in is the plans for a sea wall on Ramsey’s south quayside.

The planning application, submitted in October last year, for this was recently withdrawn, which included a new sea wall, reconstruction of the road that runs alongside the quay and the installation of a new leisure area.

The Department of Infrastructure and Ramsey Commissioners pledged to work together to come up with an improved plan.

Mr Cowin said: ’We had a really interesting meeting just before Christmas with the DoI minister and the director of highways and it was agreed that we would pull the planning application for that.

’We also discussed what we should do as a way forward. I think this year is really about how we can work together to make sure that we do get the flood wall in place and that we do get the quayside roadway replaced but we balance off things like loss of parking. That can be done.

’I want us to work together really closely with the DoI to make sure that at some point in the not too distant future both the DoI and Ramsey Commissioners and the town of Ramsey are supportive of the planning application that will have to go in for that future scheme.’

Mr Cowin added: ’I am delighted to have taken up this challenging and influential role in Ramsey, a town I love, grew up in and, together with my wife, have brought up my three children.’