Port Erin Commissioners have rejected a call to allow their ratepayers to have the final say on a boundary dispute.

It’s the latest twist in the saga over the Ballakilley land dispute.

In 2018, Port Erin Commissioners applied to have its boundary extended to include all the homes in the Ballakilley estate, including 78 homes which are in the parish of Rushen.

A public inquiry found in its favour but the application for Tynwald was withdrawn when Rushen made its own tit-for-tat application to take over the 90 homes on the Port Erin side.

In November, Port Erin Commissioners offered to pay Rushen £30,000 towards a proposed recreational project - if the parish withdrew its tit-for-tat application.

But Ballakilley’s Rushen residents rejected the offer in significant numbers.

Many pointed out that the income that Port Erin will enjoy from the proposed boundary extension would be far in excess of the £30,000 offered.

Members of Port Erin Commissioners met with their Rushen counterparts ahead of the parish’s board meeting last month to discuss the way forward.

The minutes of that meeting note that they ’rejected Rushen’s offer to be bound by the will of the Ballakilley residents on both sides of the estate, despite Port Erin having the built-in majority of residents on their side’.

Port Erin Commissioners’ view was that their residents would probably prefer to benefit from Rushen’s lower rate.

Port Erin announced its rates will increase by just under 1% to 310p in the pound this year.

But Rushen residents will see their rates fall by 8p to just 130p in the pound, with separate fixed refuse charges scrapped.

If the takeover by Port Erin is given the go-ahead, rates for those Ballakilley homes on the Rushen side will increase by an average of almost £250 over 10 years.

Port Erin has written to the Infrastructure Minister seeking urgent resolution of the matter.

Following the departure of Port Erin’s commissioners, Rushen’s board agreed that its clerk should also write to the Minister requesting a meeting to discuss the way forward.

The clerk would make it clear that the commissioners would prefer the Minister to find in favour of the status quo - but if that were not possible, then ’reluctantly they would feel it necessary to pursue their boundary extension application’.

Clerk Phil Gawne is to write to all residents on both sides of the estate explaining what the parish authority intends to do and explaining that Port Erin Commissioners had rejected the board’s offer for the matter to be resolved by Ballakilley residents.

Since Rushen’s merger with neighbouring Arbory, it now has the same number of households as Port Erin and provides all the services statutorily required while charging less than half the Port Erin rate.

It is understood that Rushen has asked the Department of Infrastructure to justify how rate income could be taken away from one authority and handed over to an apparently less efficient, similar-sized authority.

Rushen is calling for the DoI to undertake a full review of the cost structures and services provided by both the local authorities, the Examiner understands.