NEW businesses are favouring Jersey over Guernsey as their Channel Islands base, a new report has said.
The Critical Economics pan-Channel Islands investigation comes as RBC Wealth Management has announced it will close its Guernsey office, putting 89 jobs at risk, as it relocates key services to Jersey.
In assessing the risks and opportunities of working closer together on the delivery of public services, Critical Economics said that the private sector was already embracing CI economies of scale.
‘There have been numerous businesses, particularly UK corporate organisations, which have seen the merit in operating seamlessly across both Jersey and Guernsey and, in some instances, Alderney as well,’ it said. ‘One resultant trend over the past few years has been the preference for new business to favour Jersey as the CI hub.’
Important factors at play include:
– Better air transport connectivity to and from Jersey.
– Lower cost of travel to and from Jersey.
– More flexible labour/immigration polices in Jersey than in Guernsey.
– The benefits of a greater land area in Jersey as compared with Guernsey, which has helped business premises to expand and houses to be built.
In 2019, the Guernsey International Business Association warned that Guernsey could become an outsourcing centre for Jersey unless the Island’s air links issues were addressed.
It said that as the differences between what the Islands offered narrowed, business would locate where they could travel the easiest. And it identified a trend in which previously locally owned and managed businesses were now part of global groups who did not have their management functions here.
