TT Spending

Summary

The requester asked for a breakdown of £1m spent by the Department for Enterprise on motorsport events and the TT. The authority responded that the £1m figure represented remaining contractual spend after significant savings were made due to the 2020 event cancellation, and provided economic impact data from 2019.

Key Facts

• Contractual discussions following the March 2020 cancellation resulted in savings of £5,757,746.
• The remaining spend was primarily contractual and reviewed on a case-by-case basis to ensure necessity.
• Staff costs included personnel redirected to pandemic response and others working on strategic reviews.
• The budget covers the TT, Classic TT, Manx Grand Prix, and Southern 100, but not the National or International Rally.
• In 2019, motorsport events generated £48.9m in visitor spend and £6.3m in exchequer benefit.

Data Disclosed

• £1m
• 2021-05-04
• 2021-06-01
• March 2020
• £5,757,746
• 62,193
• £48.9m
• £35.4m
• £6.3m
• 2019
• 1777953

Original Request

I seek the publication of a breakdown of the £1m spent by the department on motorsport events and the TT. This figure was referenced by Onchan MHK Julie Edge and Enterprise Minister Laurence Skelly in the House of Keys on May 4.

Data Tables (1)

Full Response Text

As soon as the decision to cancel the event was taken in March 2020, major contractual discussions occurred resulting in a saving of £5,757,746 from what would otherwise have been the case.

The remaining spend that occurred was therefore primarily contractual and the Department reviewed each item on a case-by-case basis to ensure that the spend was necessary – either contractually or in some cases, without which supporting infrastructure would fail, risking future events.

As to staff costs, during this period some of the staff were redirected to other tasks such as responding to the pandemic and others have been working full time on a range of strategic and operational reviews to improve the events for future years.

The budget and payments includes costs and commitments for the TT, Classic TT, Manx Grand Prix and Southern 100. The ‘National’ and ‘International’ Rally had not incurred contractual costs at that stage.

In 2019 the TT Races and Classic TT Races/ Manx Grand Prix resulted in a combined total of 62,193 visitors with a total spend of £48.9m which represented an economic benefit of £35.4m contributing £6.3m exchequer benefit (EAD Survey 2019).

Please quote the reference number 1777953 in any future communications.

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Should you have any queries concerning this letter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Further information about freedom of information requests can be found at www.gov.im/foi.

I will now close your request as of this date.

Yours sincerely