Where we sit
What Locate Jersey does, and what it does not
Locate Jersey is the Government of Jersey's inward investment service. It gives free, confidential advice to high value individuals and to businesses moving to the island, and it is the point of contact for a High Value Residency enquiry. It costs nothing, it is open to anyone considering the move, and for a great many people it is the only help they need.
What Locate Jersey covers
The service exists to bring people and businesses to Jersey, and it is resourced to do that properly. Three things sit squarely inside it.
High Value Residency enquiries
A 2(1)(e) enquiry starts here. Locate Jersey explains the criteria, discusses whether a case is worth taking forward, and takes it through to the Minister's decision. If you want to know whether the published criteria describe you, that conversation is free and it is the right first one to have.The current thresholds, dated, are on this site so you can read them before you pick up the phone.
Inward business investment
A company relocating to Jersey, or a new business that will employ people here, deals with Locate Jersey on the licence application and on what the island can offer it. This is the part of the service that is least understood by people who have only read about the residency route.What the business licence actually permitsis a separate question, and the one that catches employers out.
A single point of contact inside government
Jersey's government is small and reachable in a way larger jurisdictions are not. Locate Jersey is the door, and behind it are the departments that decide. That access is real, it is free, and no private firm can offer a substitute for it.
What falls outside it
None of the following is a failing. They are simply not what the service is for, and people arrive expecting them anyway.
- Finding and securing a home. Locate Jersey does not search for you, view for you, or negotiate for you. On a2(1)(e) move the property is the hard part, and it is entirely yours to solve.
- Legal and tax advice. Government does not advise you on your own position, and it certainly does not advise you on your position in the country you are leaving. That work is regulated and it is bought separately.
- The arrival layer. School places, GP registration, banking, driving licences, utilities, the car, the dog. This is the part that decides whether the move actually worked, and nobody in government is holding a list of it for you.
- Telling you not to come. The remit is to attract people to Jersey. It would be strange to expect the island's own team to make the case against the island.
- Most work moves. If you have a job offer and your employer is handling the permission, Locate Jersey is not part of your route at all. What governs your move isyour residential status, which is decided elsewhere.
Whose interest each party serves
Six parties turn up in a Jersey move. They are not in competition and most of them are good at their jobs. What differs is who is paying them, and that is worth having in front of you before you decide who to trust on what.
| Who | Who pays them | Whose interest they serve |
|---|---|---|
| Locate Jersey | The Jersey taxpayer | The island. Its remit is to attract the right people and businesses and to move applications through government. |
| Your advocate | You, by the hour | You. Bound by professional conduct and client-money rules, and the only person here who can give you legal advice. |
| Your tax adviser | You, by the hour or by engagement | You — in the jurisdiction they are qualified in. A Jersey adviser cannot tell you what leaving Britain does to your position there. |
| The estate agent | The seller or the landlord, out of the transaction | Whoever is paying them. That is not a criticism; it is how the profession is funded, and it is worth seeing clearly before you take a view on a property. |
| The removals firm | You, on a quote | The move itself, between two front doors. Nothing before and nothing after. |
| relocatejersey.je | You, on a fixed fee agreed in writing | You. Our fee is fixed rather than a share of any transaction, and any commission offered to us by the parties above is disclosed to you in writing first. |
You probably do not need us
This is the section a relocation firm is not supposed to write, so here it is early rather than buried.
If you are moving for a job, your employer holds the permission, and you are renting rather than buying, your move is administrative. Locate Jersey will answer the questions you have. The Customer Hub will issue your registration card. You will spend a fortnight on paperwork and then you will be living here. Paying anybody a fee for that is money you should keep.
The same is true of a straightforward High Value Residency case where the numbers are comfortable, the property has already been found, and you are happy to run the diary yourself. Locate Jersey handles the application. An advocate handles the law. You do not need a third party in the middle.
We say this on first calls and we mean it. Turning somebody away honestly costs less than taking a fee for work that did not need doing.
When an independent adviser is worth the fee
Three situations, and they have one thing in common: something in the move needs somebody whose only job is your side of it.
When the sequence is the problem
Approval, property, funds, schools and a leaving date all have to line up, and they are held by different people who do not talk to each other. The most expensive failures in a Jersey move are not refusals. They are approvals that arrive with nowhere to live, or a container that sails before the status does.
When you need somebody to say no
The property does not qualify. The timeline will not hold. The adviser has quoted you for six hours of document-gathering that an assistant could have done. None of the parties in the table above is positioned to tell you that, and it is the single most valuable thing an adviser paid only by you can do.
When the admin is the cost
Evidencing a wealth position across several jurisdictions and structures is the longest stage of a 2(1)(e) application and the one nobody warns people about. It is also the stage most often billed at an advocate's hourly rate. Preparation is not legal work, and it should not be priced as though it were.How we run an applicationsets out exactly which parts we do and which we refer out.
What we will never say
That Locate Jersey is slow, hard to reach, or a hurdle to get past. That island access runs through us. That we can improve the odds on a decision we do not make. Any of those would be false, and under the Consumer Protection (Unfair Practices) (Jersey) Law the first two would also be unlawful.Our regulatory position sets out the boundary in full, including the parts of a relocation we always refer out.
Use Locate Jersey. Then decide, with the table above in front of you, whether anything is left that you want somebody on your side of it.