PCD Leeds Conference | Panel 2: International Relocation | 3 March 2026

The international relocation session at PCD Leeds opened with a provocation from host Ken Chapman, who observed that the UK has done an "amazingly bad job" of retaining its appeal since the high-water mark of the London 2012 Olympics, and invited the panel to explore what that means in practice for advisers whose clients are increasingly asking what comes next. The panel, Paul Bricknell, Head of Private Client at Kuits Solicitors in Manchester; Anne Baggesen, Head of Business Development at Charterhouse Lombard; Alison Teare, Head of Locate Isle of Man; and Ali Stennett, Managing Director of Conexus, delivered one of the morning's most grounded and practical sessions, moving from the broad drivers of relocation through to the mechanics of departure, the realities of day-counting, and the lived experience of the Island itself.

Why People Are Leaving and Who They Are

The panel's opening exchange made clear that the story is more nuanced than tax headlines suggest. Alison Teare, who fields inbound enquiries from the Isle of Man government's Locate service on a daily basis, reported that safety, security, and stability consistently top the list of stated reasons, often ahead of tax and financial gains. "More and more the conversations are around safety, family, lifestyle, and aspiration," she said.

Ali Stennett, whose firm Conexus advises high net worth individuals and their families on Isle of Man tax matters, offered a complementary but distinct view. His firm does have daily conversations about tax. What has shifted dramatically, he said, is the demographic. Where relocation was once largely associated with older clients approaching a specific exit event or looking at IHT mitigation, the profile is now increasingly younger and entrepreneurial. Since October 2024, Conexus has welcomed forty new high net worth clients relocating to the Island, a number Stennett described with a mixture of professional satisfaction and genuine concern for what it signals about the UK. "I'm English," he said, "and I share that disappointment."

Paul Bricknell echoed the sentiment. Beyond the tax dimension, he said, he is increasingly encountering clients, particularly within certain communities, who simply no longer feel welcome in the UK. "I find it quite depressing when clients talk about who've come to the UK to build their lives, have been here thirty or forty years, and no longer feel welcome." He was equally frank about his own starting position: as a UK-based adviser, his first instinct is always to see whether a client's tax position can be improved enough that they feel they do not need to leave at all.

Anne Baggesen, whose firm Charterhouse Lombard provides trust and corporate services from both the Isle of Man and Dubai, brought a perspective shaped by twenty-five years in the fiduciary industry. She described a clear shift in what clients are actually asking for when they arrive at her door. Where previously many were enquiring about Isle of Man structures for assets held by clients remaining in the UK or elsewhere, she is now seeing a different kind of conversation: clients who are actively moving themselves and their businesses to the Island. "They come to us because they've had some advice, or they want to set up an Isle of Man company because they have a business that they're selling and they're relocating," she said , and often those clients then need to be connected with what the Island can offer them more broadly, including through the Locate Isle of Man service. "It's great to have the opportunity to be in that space and to talk about it," she said. "When you're presented with a client that's thinking about that, you know what other opportunities there are, which are pretty positive."

Anne Baggesen: The Isle of Man as a Place of Opportunity

Baggesen's contribution ran deeper than the mechanics of structures. She spoke with evident warmth about the Island as a place she has watched evolve , having herself relocated there from Leeds around thirty years ago, initially for reasons entirely unrelated to tax. "I didn't have any assets apart from my bright yellow Volkswagen Beetle at the time," she said. "But within a year or two, I'd set up home, had a family, got a job, and started a career." That personal history lent her commentary a grounded authenticity: the Isle of Man as a place of opportunity, not merely a planning option.

She described the Island's entrepreneurial environment as a genuine enabler, pointing to the breadth of industries that have come to call it home, and noting that it has become considerably more ethnically diverse since she first arrived. As an example of the kind of business journey the Island can support, she recounted the story of a company that relocated from London and set up a high-end knitting business on the Isle of Man, employing local people, receiving government support, and building a genuine success story. "It isn't necessarily tax driven," she observed. "For a lot of people it was about space and opportunity and lifestyle." The example spoke to something the session returned to repeatedly: that the Isle of Man's appeal, properly understood, is not reducible to its tax regime.

On the question of where most of her incoming clients originate, Baggesen's answer was telling. "It's mostly the UK, and probably more so from the north of England, that's my experience." For clients with international dimensions, British nationals returning from the US, for instance, or families with assets spread across multiple jurisdictions, she was direct about how the Isle of Man compares to the alternatives. "If the comparisons are Jersey, Guernsey, Gibraltar, the Isle of Man would win hands down," she said. The combination of the common travel area, a shared cultural familiarity with the UK, and the absence of property restrictions makes it, in her view, the most accessible and most practical of the Crown dependencies for the clients she works with.

The Isle of Man in Practice: Space, Safety, and Connectivity

Teare and Stennett fleshed out the practical picture for advisers who need to be able to answer clients' day-to-day questions with confidence. On property, Teare cited comparison data showing Isle of Man prices running 23% below Cheshire, and 72% below Jersey on a per-square-metre basis. The Island operates as a free property market, no registration restrictions, no stamp duty equivalent, and no barriers to purchasing, making it straightforward to establish a foothold, quickly. There is also genuine space: Douglas sits roughly twenty minutes from almost everywhere on the Island, and a commute from the northern tip takes around thirty minutes.

Connectivity, a common concern for clients with UK family ties, proved one of the Isle of Man's most compelling selling points. Flights run to Liverpool and Manchester in approximately thirty minutes, with services to Heathrow, Gatwick, and London City taking around seventy minutes. Ferry connections operate to Heysham and Liverpool, with new daily services to Ireland launching from April. "You can do a day trip," Bricknell noted, a point with direct relevance for clients who have exited a business but retain involvement in it, since a day trip from Liverpool does not count as a midnight for UK residency purposes.

Stennett described the tone of the Island itself as something clients genuinely value once they arrive. "It feels a little bit like going back twenty years in the UK," he said , a place where safety is not abstract. One client, relocating from the UK after a recent traumatic burglary specifically cited the Isle of Man environment as somewhere they could safely lock up and travel the world without anxiety. "That's the positive thing," he said. "It's not always tax."

The Tax Mechanics of Departure

Bricknell led the panel through the key considerations for clients departing the UK with a specific tax event in mind. The starting point, he suggested, is always to identify the driver: is this a capital gains tax exit, or a longer-term IHT plan? For CGT planning, the ideal departure date is 6 April, or 5 April the following year, to maximise clarity on day counts and avoid split-year complexity. In practice, working from an assumption of no more than ninety midnights in the UK is the sensible starting position.

For IHT planning, the horizon is considerably longer: a minimum of ten years outside the UK before the full inheritance tax benefits of offshore residence take effect. Bricknell was direct about the human realities. "The majority of people who come and talk to us about going offshore don't actually do it," he said. When clients sit down and map out what the day count truly means, visiting grandchildren, elderly parents in care homes, school events, the theoretical appeal frequently meets practical resistance. He recounted a client who relocated to Spain, completed their business exit two years into the five-year minimum period, and was then faced with the question of where to seek treatment for a rare cancer diagnosis. The answer was the Christie Hospital in Manchester. They came back and paid the tax. "Be realistic about what triggers might mean it doesn't work," he advised.

Stennett added an important practical clarification for Isle of Man relocations specifically. Unlike some jurisdictions that require a minimum number of days to establish tax residency, the Isle of Man's test turns on available accommodation and the intention to reside, with no minimum day requirement. This makes the Island a highly flexible base: clients can spend time in Spain, Portugal, or elsewhere, managing their UK day count carefully without being constrained to any particular number of days on the Isle of Man itself. He also noted its value as a staging post, a number of clients use it as a platform before moving to longer-term destinations such as Italy, doing their exit event in a tax-favourable environment before settling elsewhere.

Both Bricknell and Stennett were emphatic on the importance of monitoring day counts actively rather than leaving clients to manage it themselves. Bricknell recounted a client who was supposedly Isle of Man resident and yet seemed to be in the UK every time a meeting was needed. The client's reasoning: no passport is shown when flying to the Isle of Man, so how would HMRC know? The answer, Bricknell noted, is flight manifests. "Help clients monitor that," he said. "Don't just leave them to themselves to do it, because it tends to go wrong."

A Collaborative, Welcoming Environment

Both Teare and Stennett emphasised the collaborative culture of the Isle of Man's professional community as a meaningful differentiator. The Locate Isle of Man service operates as a genuine concierge: initial enquiries lead to signposting on schools, housing, car registration, banking introductions, and the relevant professional advisers. The government's responsiveness stands out particularly, Teare described the ability to get the right group of government and industry contacts around a table within two or three days as something that consistently surprises clients accustomed to dealing with HMRC or larger jurisdictions. Teare openly invited the audience to visit the Isle of Man, noting that “to truly appreciate the opportunities the Island has to offer, you need to see and experience it for yourself.” She encouraged anyone interested to reach out to Locate Isle of Man, emphasising the team’s willingness to support and guide prospective residents and their advisors.

Stennett described the collaborative ethos as fundamental to how Conexus operates. The name itself, derived from the Latin for "together" , reflects the firm's approach: when a new client arrives, the introduction typically comes from government, existing UK advisers, or a bank, and the response is collective. "We'll recommend somewhere to go for lunch. If they haven't got bankers, we'll introduce them to the bankers." He contrasted this with the experience of dealing with HMRC: "We have direct access to the income tax division. We can simply walk in and arrange a meeting. We don't have to stay on a call for an hour listening to the HMRC music."

Baggesen reinforced the point from the perspective of a provider who has spent decades working within the Island's financial community. The trust and corporate services sector, she noted, is genuinely collaborative, a small enough jurisdiction that competitors regularly work together in the client's interest, and a large enough professional base to offer genuine depth of expertise. She echoed the broader invitation from the panel to UK advisers who have not yet engaged with the Island directly: the opportunity to bring clients there, and to see what it actually looks like beyond the capital, is real, and open. "There are different sorts of industries that have come and gone and some have stayed," she said. "The entrepreneurial environment of the Isle of Man is a real enabler."

Bricknell closed with a direct appeal to the Northern advisers in the room. The Isle of Man does not require London firms for UK advisory work, and the more Northern practitioners engage with the Island on behalf of their clients, the stronger that message becomes. "Come and use us for the UK advice," he said. "You don't need to go to London for the vast majority of it." Stennett agreed, noting that private client work is often better focused outside the large firms, and that the depth of expertise now based in Leeds, Manchester, and the broader North is something the Isle of Man's professional community is actively seeking to tap into. It was a practical and quietly confident note on which to close, and a fitting summary of a session that had made the case for the Isle of Man not as an abstract offshore option, but as a genuinely viable, proximate, and human choice for clients thinking seriously about what comes next.