How to apply for High Value Residency

What is actually being assessed

The legal test is short. Regulation 5 asks whether granting you Entitled status is justified “on economic or social grounds, or both” and is “in the best interests of the community”. It names no figure.

The figures come from Locate Jersey’s published criteria: a committed minimum annual tax contribution, wealth that supports that commitment beyond your current income, and a qualifying property. They are how the Panel is shown the economic case. They are not the whole of it.

That is the part applicants underestimate. What you do, what you might do here, and how straightforward your affairs are all bear on whether your arrival is in the community’s interest. It is a judgement, and judgements respond to how well a case is presented.

Is this still a 2(1)(e) application?

No, though you will see the name everywhere. Article 2(1)(e) was retired on 14 September 2026, when the Control of Housing and Work (Residential and Employment Status) (Jersey) Regulations 2025 came into force. High Value Residency now leads to Entitled status under Regulation 5, and the Housing and Work Control Panel replaced the Housing and Work Advisory Group.

Anyone who held 2(1)(e) status before that date keeps it. The full picture of what changed, and what did not.

The stages

1. Private assessment

Establish whether the figures work before anyone is contacted. Nothing is filed at this stage and nothing needs to be.

2. Evidence assembly

Income, wealth, sources of wealth, structures, existing tax position, and identity documentation to onboarding standard. This is the long stage. If assets sit across several jurisdictions, expect it to dominate the timeline.

3. Approach to Locate Jersey

The case is put to the government team who run High Value Residency. Their service is free and it is genuinely useful; our role is to make sure what reaches them is complete and consistent.

4. Panel recommendation and grant

The Housing and Work Control Panel considers the case and recommends, and a determining officer grants Entitled status on that recommendation. The Panel can recommend that conditions are attached to the grant, and a grant made under Regulation 5 can be revoked if a condition attached to it stops being met. Ask what conditions are proposed in your case, and read them before you buy.

Locate Jersey’s published expectation for the decision is usually no more than 15 working days, normally within the same calendar month, for applications submitted in the first few working days of the month. It is an expectation, not a guarantee, and it covers the decision alone — not the property, tax and move work that sits around it.

A fee of £10,506.25 is payable on approval (as of 1 January 2026), on top of the professional fees, stamp duty and property costs of the move itself.

5. Property

The qualifying property has to be secured and occupied within the period the approval allows. Why this stage should have started at step one.

6. Arrival and the practical layer

Registration cards, banking, schooling, healthcare, vehicles — the part that has nothing to do with status and everything to do with whether the move works.

Where applications stall

Three places, consistently.

Evidence that lives in six places. A wealth position spread across trusts, holding companies and several banks takes weeks to document properly. Applicants who start gathering when the application starts add those weeks to the front of the process.

Inconsistency between advisers. The tax adviser’s picture, the advocate’s picture and the application’s picture have to be the same picture. When three professionals each hold a different version of the same facts, the file goes back and forth. Somebody has to hold the whole thing, and that is the specific job we do.

Property left until the end. An approval that arrives with no property identified starts a clock against a market of very few available houses. This is the failure mode that costs the most and is the easiest to avoid.

What we do, and what we do not

We prepare and coordinate: assemble the evidence pack, brief the advocate and the tax adviser so you are not paying hourly rates for document-chasing, keep the single version of the facts, and run the property search in parallel rather than afterwards.

We do not give tax or legal advice, and we do not replace Locate Jersey — their service is free and you should use it. What we add is that we work only for you. Our regulatory position sets out where our work stops.