Three authorities sharing one constituency, and almost nothing else. Braddan runs a housing stock, carries £18.1m of borrowing and spends more on interest than Santon spends on everything. Santon has no borrowing, no staff beyond its clerk, and a balance sheet of £126,529. Marown sits between them and has run a deficit three years running. Each diagram below traces every pound from where it comes in to where it goes out.
The big one. Rate income doubled in four years and the rate in the pound rose 60%, from 230p to 367p. Its £2.5m rate account is only part of the picture — the borrowing and the housing sit outside it.
Spent more than it earned in all three years and covered the gap from reserves. Two thirds of everything it spends is waste collection and disposal. Its audit and compliance bill is nearly as large as its entire administration.
The smallest by a wide margin, and the only one of the three running a surplus every year. It publishes none of this itself — the figures exist publicly only because the Department lays local authority accounts before Tynwald.
All three serve one constituency and levy a rate on their residents. On a like-for-like year, Braddan takes thirteen times as much rate income as Santon.
| Year ended 31 March 2024 | Braddan | Marown | Santon |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rate income | £1,443,032 | £322,316 | £110,912 |
| Relative to Santon | 13.0× | 2.9× | 1.0× |
| Result for the year | — | −£20,469 | +£3,491 |
| Borrowing | £18.1m | none | none |
| Publishes its own accounts? | yes | 2019 only | no |
Braddan's figure is a budget estimate on a rates-funded basis; Marown's and Santon's are audited outturn on an accruals basis. Braddan's result for the year is not shown because an estimate has no outturn result. The borrowing figure for Braddan is at 31 March 2025.
Read the comparison carefully. These three diagrams are not yet like-for-like. Braddan's is built from forward estimates; Marown's and Santon's from audited outturn. They use different structures — Braddan has four service committees, Marown has three expense headings, Santon has none at all — and they cover different years, because Marown's and Santon's accounts run two years behind Braddan's. Marown and Santon are directly comparable with each other. A genuine three-way comparison needs a common functional mapping, which has deliberately not been imposed here rather than done quietly.
Five authorities in the south, across three different tiers of local government — Parish, Village and Town — and the scale differences between tiers are bigger than the differences within any one of them. Port Erin, Port St Mary and Castletown each carry millions in borrowing for harbours, halls and housing; the parish bodies alongside them carry little or none.
Arbory & Rushen and Malew report on the same audited-outturn basis, for the same two years, so this pair is directly comparable. Arbory & Rushen is the newest authority on the island — formed by a 2020 merger of the former separate Arbory and Rushen commissioners. Malew is the wealthiest by balance sheet of the two, and pays down real commercial bank debt every year.
Formed 1 May 2020 from the merger of two separate parish commissioners. Runs its own housing revenue account and carries a small legacy commercial loan. Surplus grew six-fold in a single year.
Ballasalla's authority. Carries genuine commercial bank debt, paid down every year, and absorbed a one-off £384k impairment tied to the Ballasalla bypass land disposal.
Port Erin and Port St Mary are the island's only two Village-tier authorities — separate from, and roughly the same order of size as, the parish they sit within. Both carry millions in borrowing, unlike any parish body built so far.
The biggest balance sheet of any authority built so far — £30m of net assets — and a rate in the pound that overtook Braddan's this year. Surplus more than doubled in the most recent year.
The highest rate in the pound of any authority built so far — 386p, ahead of Braddan — and a deficit every year, funded from a balance sheet swollen by a revaluation gain rather than by cash.
Castletown is the first Town-tier authority built — the ancient former capital, and structurally closer to Braddan than to any parish: real committees, a harbour, a museum contribution, and its own published accounts going back to 2010/11.
Sorted by rate income, most recent verified year for each. The tier boundaries are where the real jumps are — not the Middle/South split above them.
| Authority | Tier | Rate income | Rate in the £ | Result for year | Borrowing | Net assets |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Castletown | Town | £1,231,242 | 356p | +£174,880 | £10.4m | £32.8m |
| Port Erin | Village | £1,116,967 | 378p | +£351,783 | £5.2m | £30.0m |
| Port St Mary | Village | £532,169 | 386p | −£124,936 | £4.5m | £17.2m |
| Malew | Parish | £787,588 | 199p | +£63,158 | £263k | £3.7m |
| Arbory & Rushen | Parish | £517,635 | 162p | +£42,885 | £28k | £1.1m |
Years differ by authority — see each card above for its own year. Castletown's rate income combines its General and Refuse rate lines (both are rates, just itemised separately in its accounts); the other four use each authority's single general-rate-fund figure. Rate poundages are not adjusted for the different net-rateable-value base each authority sits on.
Village and Town aren't just bigger parishes. Every Village and Town authority here carries millions in borrowing; every Parish authority carries thousands or none. That's not incumbency or mismanagement — it's the tier: villages and towns own harbours, halls, promenades and housing stock that parishes simply don't have on their books. Comparing a parish's zero borrowing favourably against a town's £10m, without saying why, would be misleading.
Eleven authorities, none in Middle or South constituency, grouped here by geography rather than politics — seven in the north, one in the east, three in the west. Most are small parishes carrying no borrowing at all; Garff and the two Town-tier authorities, Ramsey and Peel, are the exceptions. What's striking about the rest isn't their size, it's how visibly they already share services with their neighbours — Ramsey and Peel don't just pay into shared boards, they host one each, and Michael is the first authority confirmed on two clusters at once.
Andreas, Ballaugh, Bride, Jurby, Lezayre and Ramsey all sit in the north of the island. Four of the small parishes name the same shared bodies in their own accounts — the Northern Parishes Refuse Collection Board, the Northern Civic Amenity Site, and a Northern (Local Authorities) Swimming Pool Board — under near-identical wording, and Ramsey's own accounts confirm why: Ramsey hosts the Northern District Civic Amenity Joint Committee on behalf of all seven northern parishes and recovers £189,240 a year from the other six. This is the clearest cross-authority collaboration match found anywhere on this site; see the benchmarking page for the full comparison.
Hosts the Northern District Civic Amenity Joint Committee on behalf of six neighbouring parishes, recovering £189,240 a year from them — Ramsey's answer to Douglas's Eastern site. Only one source PDF exists, so this page shows two years, not three.
Ran a deficit all three years, but its own reserve statement shows the cash-backed General Fund actually grew each year. Rate in the pound has since climbed to 188p, set for 2026/27 — a 30.5% jump in one year, per local press.
A near-breakeven authority until 2023-24, when a £25,740 downward revaluation of fixed assets turned a small surplus into a £38,421 deficit on paper — an accounting swing, not a cash one.
The longest run of any authority here — four years, not three. Two deficit years pulled net assets from £196,376 down to £166,194, before a 2024-25 surplus took them back up to £173,146.
A deficit narrowing sharply — £22,391, then £18,350, then £6,710 — while net assets fell from £519,053 to £452,343, almost entirely a £60,000 downward asset revaluation, not operating losses.
Only two years shown — its 2023-24 accounts weren't in the archive at time of retrieval, flagged on its own page. The last loan was cleared during 2021/22; both years since have run a modest deficit.
German, Patrick, Michael and Peel sit in the west. Patrick and Michael's own accounts explicitly name a Western Civic Amenity Site Board and a Western (Local Authorities) Swimming Pool — the same Western Civic Amenity Site Board that Marown (Middle tab) already names — and Peel's own accounts confirm why: Peel hosts the Western civic amenity site and swimming pool on behalf of its neighbours, Peel's answer to Ramsey's northern role and Douglas's eastern one. Michael is the one authority on this site confirmed touching two clusters simultaneously — Western for civic amenity, swimming and housing, but Northern for refuse. German pays into an unnamed "civic amenity site" and swimming pool contribution that, on geography, is plausibly the same Western pair — but its own accounts don't use the word "Western", so that one link isn't confirmed.
Hosts the Western civic amenity site and Western swimming pool for its neighbours. No harbour on the balance sheet, despite Peel's fishing heritage — like Douglas's, it's managed by central government, not the Commissioners. Housing runs a structural surplus here, the reverse of Douglas's.
The only surplus-every-year authority in this batch — though the surplus has more than halved in three years, from £56,981 to £27,461, as civic amenity and waste disposal costs both climbed.
Swung from a £34,365 deficit in 2022-23 — the year highway services costs nearly tripled — back to a £19,422 surplus in 2023-24. Rate in the pound has risen fastest of any authority here: 190p to 221p in two years.
The one authority confirmed on two joint-board clusters at once: Western for civic amenity, swimming and housing; Northern for refuse. Only one usable source PDF — the 2024 accounts file in the archive turned out to be corrupted.
Garff was formed in 2016 from the merger of the village district of Laxey and the parish districts of Lonan and Maughold — now the largest local authority on the island by geographical area, and the only one in this batch carrying real debt, including a direct Isle of Man Government loan alongside commercial borrowing. It took six years to fully unify: as late as 2021/22 it was still charging three separate legacy rate poundages from its three predecessor bodies. It also sits at the crossing point of two of this site's confirmed joint boards — an Eastern civic amenity site and a Northern one — geographically between the north and south clusters documented elsewhere on this page.
Sorted by rate income, most recent verified year for each. Ramsey and Peel — both Town tier, both hosting a joint board — dominate the top of the table; the eight small parishes underneath are all debt-free except Garff.
| Authority | Cluster | Rate income | Rate in the £ | Result for year | Net assets | Borrowing |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ramsey | North | £3,130,602 | 445p | +£614,176 | £68,257,705 | £30,313,288 |
| Peel | West | £1,661,273‡ | 267p | +£524,009 | £49,546,410 | £10,806,253 |
| Garff | East | £1,012,627‡ | 191.5p | +£92,829 | £4,046,253 | £984,935 |
| Patrick | West | £204,253 | 221p | +£19,422 | £76,551 | none |
| Lezayre | North | £199,426 | 97p‡ | −£5,734 | £795,610 | none |
| Ballaugh | North | £167,006 | 125p‡ | −£38,421 | £141,874 | none |
| Andreas | North | £136,131 | 134p | −£13,532 | £670,505 | none |
| Bride | North | £116,730 | 70p | +£6,952 | £173,146 | none |
| Jurby | North | £84,459 | 149p | −£6,710 | £452,343 | none |
| German | West | £269,620‡ | 94p | +£27,461 | £443,213 | none |
| Michael | West/North | £266,991‡ | 144p | +£21,321 | £569,174 | none |
‡Where an authority runs separate general and refuse rate funds, the figure shown is the general rate fund alone, except Ballaugh, Lezayre, German, Garff, Peel and Michael, which are shown combined (general + refuse) because that's the headline figure their own pages use — see each page's own table for the full split. Years differ by authority; Ramsey's and Michael's 2022-23 are each their most recent verified year, not 2023-24, because a second source PDF was either missing (Ramsey) or corrupted (Michael).
Three authorities host, the rest pay in — and Michael sits on two clusters at once. Ramsey hosts the Northern District Civic Amenity Joint Committee for six neighbouring parishes; Peel hosts the equivalent Western civic amenity site and swimming pool; Douglas (see its own tab) hosts an Eastern one for Onchan, Braddan, Santon and Garff. Andreas, Ballaugh, Bride and Jurby each name at least two of the three Northern boards in their own accounts; Patrick and Michael each name the Western ones; Michael alone is confirmed on both. Four separate joint-board clusters, three of them now confirmed from both the host's and the payers' own published accounts — see the benchmarking page for the full map.
Douglas gets its own tab because it doesn't belong on anyone else's scale — it's the capital, a Borough Council rather than a Commissioners, and roughly ten times the rate income of Braddan or Castletown, the next-biggest authorities on this site. Its own accounts are headed "Douglas City Council," though the island's official roster and this site both use "Borough Council." The diagram below shows the General Fund only — the rate-funded services. Douglas also runs a Housing Revenue Account nearly nine times the size of the General Fund, self-funded by rents rather than rates; it's summarised separately on the diagram's own page rather than merged into the main flow. Onchan sits alongside it here rather than in the North/East/West tab, because the two are joined by a confirmed joint board and genuine geographic adjacency — Onchan is effectively Douglas's neighbour.
Rate in the pound rose from 468p to 573p in two years — up 22%. Net deficit on the year narrowed to £4.445m in 2024-25 after a £9.22m deficit the year before. Net assets have grown to £289.9m, though most of that growth is unrealised property revaluation, not operating surplus.
The Eastern Civic Amenity Site match is confirmed from both sides: Onchan's own accounts independently name Douglas as the site's administrator and its own payments, matching Douglas's disclosure line for line. A £12.7m prior-year restatement corrected a 2020 social-housing undervaluation.
| Douglas | Castletown (next-biggest Town) | Multiple | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rate income | £15,382,000 | £1,231,242 | 12.5× |
| Net assets | £289,885,000 | £32,801,341 | 8.8× |
| Borrowing | £90,963,000 | £10,384,205 | 8.8× |
Council housing alone — £328.3m of net book value across 2,382 dwellings and sheltered units — is worth more than every other authority's total net assets combined, built or not.
Douglas hosts a shared board — and now it's confirmed from both sides. Douglas operates the Eastern District Civic Amenity Site at Middle Park, and Onchan, Braddan, Santon and Garff all pay Douglas a cost-apportioned share to use it (Douglas ~62%, Onchan ~18%, Braddan ~13%, Garff ~5%, Santon ~2%). Onchan's own accounts independently name Douglas as the site's administrator and quote its own payments — the first time on this site a joint-board finding has been confirmed from both the host's and a payer's own published accounts, not just the host's. Santon is separately confirmed paying into a second joint arrangement too — this Eastern site and the Southern Local Authorities Swimming Pool Board — and Douglas isn't the only host: Ramsey and Peel each run an equivalent board for the north and west (see the North, East & West tab).
A pay-settlement liability worth watching. A "Single Status" creditor line — the cost of implementing a public-sector pay and grading agreement — grew from £395k to £3,285k across the four years in Douglas's accounts, roughly an eight-fold increase. The 2024-25 accounts say the financial impact has now been fully recognised, but it's the fastest-growing single line on the balance sheet and worth a resident asking about directly.
All 21 of the Isle of Man's current local authorities are now built — every Town, District, Village and Parish Commissioners on the island, from Santon's £110,912 to Douglas's £15.4m. See the full roster and a pick-any-four comparison tool on the benchmarking page, and the island-wide totals on the consolidated accounts page.
Braddan publishes its estimates as machine-readable PDFs, so those figures were read directly. Every other document — every set of statutory accounts from every Isle of Man local authority checked so far — is published only as a scanned image with no text layer, so every other authority's figures were recovered by optical character recognition and then verified rather than trusted.
Three checks were applied to each. Every subtotal must re-add to the published total. The overlapping year must read identically from two separate documents — the 2022-23 column appears in both the 2023 and the 2024 accounts. And income less expenditure must equal the published surplus or deficit exactly. Where a scan was ambiguous, the published subtotal fixed the digit — this is how, for example, Arbory & Rushen's 2022-23 street lighting figure was resolved to £52,032, Castletown's 2022-23 "Contract staff" line to £1,080 rather than £1,680, Port Erin's 2021-22 Rowany Golf net cost to £58,337 rather than £38,337, Andreas's 2022-23 Northern Civic Amenity Site line to £30,308 rather than £36,308, and Bride's 2022-23 "Toilet block cleaning and maintenance" to £3,221 rather than £4,221. Port St Mary's page uses its audited Comprehensive Income and Expenditure Statement rather than its unaudited detailed schedule, because two pages of the source scan were genuine duplicates and one schedule line didn't reconcile against the audited figure — both flagged in its Notes panel rather than patched over. Malew's expenditure lines come from a detailed General Fund reconciliation schedule that Malew's own accounts mark as not forming part of the reviewed financial statements — flagged on its page rather than left implicit. Castletown's most recent year is still in draft, unaudited, at time of retrieval; Lezayre's 2023-24 accounts weren't in the archive at time of retrieval, so its page shows only two years instead of the usual three; Andreas's own 2023 accounts contain a printed income subtotal (£203,506) that doesn't match its own components (£211,577) — the reconciled figure is used, flagged on its page. Garff's page needed a genuine six-year unification story untangled rather than a single misread digit — it was still charging three separate legacy rate poundages from its 2016 predecessor bodies as late as 2021/22. Douglas's 48-to-50-page accounts were split across two independent OCR passes — one for the revenue account, one for the balance sheet — each cross-checked against the other's headline totals before the page was built; both passed cleanly with only a handful of digit-level corrections, listed in its own Notes panel. Ramsey's and Michael's pages each show only two years rather than the usual three or four — Ramsey because only one source PDF was ever in the archive, Michael because its second PDF turned out to be a genuinely corrupted download (confirmed via `qpdf --check`, not repaired). Onchan's 2023-24 accounts carried a real £12,675,241 prior-year restatement of a 2020 social-housing undervaluation — reconciled and explained on its own Balance sheet tab rather than silently absorbed. Anything that failed these checks has been left out and is flagged in the notes of the relevant diagram.
Every figure in these diagrams is downloadable as CSV, with the reconciliations built in.