To think that surely Rayner has to go.

[Blankscreen]

Well well well.

So now it emerges that Rayner rearranged her property affairs and declared to HMRC that her new flat in Brighton is her main residence and saved £40k on the SDLT bill as a result.

She has then apparently declared to the local councils the complete opposite.

I'm sure slimeball Kier will defend and say it was perfectly legal blah blah blah.

Not to mention she has a grace and favour house funded by tax payers in London as her constituency office is so far away. Yet she 'lives' in Brighton - surely she could just commute that distance like may others do every day.

Surely she has to go.

You are correct: Reform is Torylite. LibDems are Pale Green.

She had broken a law, divorce or not she is a lying twat.

She’s broken no laws. And she paid every penny of tax owed. In fact, by saying her Hove flat is her second home she’s paying double council tax.

I’ve said that I do like AR’s style (in a general sense), and I dislike her being attacked just for who she is. But can someone explain what her concrete political achievements have been?

Overriding public opinion on new housing

By her "style" do you mean shouting at opposition MPs and calling them "scum" publicly in the HoC?

She's divorcing. She sold her stake in the house she shared with her husband (in Manchester) in order to buy one on her own (in Brighton).

Last I looked, politicians were allowed to divorce and move house just like anyone else.

She said that the house in Manchester was her primary residence for council tax purposes, not the government-owned one made available to her in London. Presumably the house in Brighton then replaces the one in Manchester as her primary residence for CT, meaning there is no change to the status of the London one.

So what exactly is the problem?

What does that mean - genuinely? Reform of planning law and the construction of millions of new, decent quality homes would indeed be an achievement. But as far as I know the legislation and framework hasn’t been put in place and house building has stalled.

The only she reason taxpayers are expected to fund two properties is so that MPs can have a base in both of their working locations:

"For the 577 out of 650 MPs with constituencies outside London, this means they will now have to travel regularly from their constituency to attend meetings, debates, and votes within the Palace of Westminster."

Why do MPs need an accommodation budget? | IPSA

Rayner was therefore entitled to claim her primary residence was her Manchester home as it serves her work in her constituency, and she was entitled to claim that she also needed a second property in London as she couldn't be expected to commute to Westminster from Manchester. However, it's difficult to see how she can claim her primary residence (that she requires in order to serve her constituency) is somewhere significantly further away from her constituency than London! If she can commute her work in Manchester from Hove, she can certainly do so from London, and so her primary residence must therefore be London, which is where she should be paying her council tax.

FYI London MPs don't get a second home allowance; MPs who do not require two bases in order to fulfil their duties both at Westminster and their constituencies don't just get funding to buy random seaside properties 'cause all the other MPs get two houses! If she had bought another Manchester home, there would be no issue.

Love Angela Rayner, voted for her to become deputy. Can't stand Starmer though.

She now steps in if it looks like Planning departments are going to reject an application and overrides it
She puts a stop to the open planning committee meetings where again there are planners and / or high renewed public opinion against them
Even when the reasoning behind refusal is valid. Which it would be of course if planners are recommending refusal

Legislation and framework is irrelevant, she overrides anything going against an application she wants to go through

Its Basically a dictatorship mentality

Only whilst unions love Labour. There's a new horse being saddled up that they might want to bet in instead.

That makes some sense in terms of whether the taxpayer-funded London property is justified, although it would still come down to what the general rule is applicable to everybody. There are plenty of other MPs who don't live in their constituencies - do they still get use of a London property funded? (Or, is the there an abiding principle that the deputy leader of the government gets a London property funded, regardless of where they live?)

If the answer is yes, it's hard to see this as anything more than the Daily Mail desperately trying to make up whatever they can to incriminate a Labour government (now there's a surprise).

But on the question of council tax - surely that's a separate issue from the public funding of London properties. The primary residence for council tax purposes would simply be the one you spend the most time in, wouldn't it?

Or, given that the Brighton home is the one she owns independently of her job and will carry on living in if she changes job, whereas the London one is loaned to her purely to carry out her employment, the Brighton one is clearly more permanent. If you owned a house outside of London but your company gave you use of a London flat because you had to be on call at irregular hours, you wouldn't then be expected to change your council tax status because of it.

I think the London property is certainly justified as a) it's a grace-and-favour and b) a lot of her work is obviously based in London. She would also be entirely justified to claim for another property whether in or near her constituency in order to fulfil her obligations there. She would be fully entitled to claim either one as her primary residence. She is also completely within her rights to buy a second, third, fifth or fiftieth property. She is not however within her rights to claim that it is her primary residence in order to avoid tax, which is what she appears to have done.

You see, it's not the fact she's claiming for a second property that's the issue, it's the fact it's so far away from either of her 'offices' that she can't seriously claim that she needs it in order to do her job, which is the entire reason MPs can claim for two properties. If she is genuinely using it as her primary residence, questions must be asked as to why is her workload so low that whilst we are paying her to work fulltime across two sites on opposite ends of the country, she spends the majority of her time at a third location entirely unrelated to her job. And if it is not indeed her primary residence, she should be paying council tax wherever is her primary residence, and she also had no right to the stamp duty discount. It's also worth asking where she is staying when she does visit her constituents, which is her main job. Are we paying for hotels?

I don't know how many MPs are living outside their constituencies, the only one I knew of (mine) lived in the neighbouring county and commuted. I think it was about an hour away, not the 5ish hours from Hove to Manchester. I also don't know whether she claimed it was her primary residence, or whether she was claiming for a second home in London. Nor do I know if she received any stamp duty or council tax discounts. Even so, people here moaned. A lot. But whilst she was in government, she wasn't a front bencher or anything like it. She was also a Tory. For a very high-ranking Labour politician who has spent her entire career whining about how evil the Tories are (scum, in fact) as they use loopholes and dodgy deals to avoid tax, it's really not a great look.

Do you actually know her? Personally?

Primary residence isn’t where you spend the most time. If you own more than one (Rayner doesn’t) you elect which is your primary residence. She’s declared her Hove flat as her secondary residence for council tax purposes which means she pays double council tax. It’s the only property she owns so she wasn’t required to pay stamp duty at the second home rate. The London property isn’t in the equation at all because she doesn’t own it and can claim for all the expenses associated with it.

Breaking news. It rather appears that we've all been gulled by the press.

https://open.substack.com/pub/monkdebunks/p/angela-rayners-so-called-property?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=3q32va
An interesting read.

Breaking news. It rather appears that we've all been gulled by the press.
https://open.substack.com/pub/monkdebunks/p/angela-rayners-so-called-property?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=3q32va
An interesting read.

Called it 😀

Now the part where the OP comes back and admits she got it wrong, by imagining that the Tory press might actually be telling the truth about something.....

I’m not convinced that blog is actually unravelling and explaining the whole thing.

I’m no expert on property, trusts and taxes - and nobody has ever suggested that AR has broken any laws - but I look forward to a full explanation of the tax, trust and liability implications of the manoeuvring with the constituency property before I say that she hasn’t behaved hypocritically.

I agree, they do know it, but they don’t care & having no morals means they’ll simply ignore the feelings of the electorate (especially when elections are so far away) & ride out the storm.

They’re all hypocrites - no matter what side of the political divide but at least the Conservatives own their hypocrisy, whereas Labour act like they’re saints!

Do I deduce from your post if she’d bought a property in Ashton under Lyne you’d have no problem with it? It’s just the geography that you have an issue with?

What she seems to have done with the former marital home is put her half in trust for her children. Presumably so if her ex remarries her kids aren’t disinherited. Surely that would be MN smart advice, wouldn’t it?

TBH, I don’t know.

I don’t understand the implications of what AR has done and whether it avoids tax or other liability in situations that this government might be changing or thinking of changing.

I’m certainly not against good financial planning and tax efficiency. Labour seems deeply suspicious of it though.

Well, if it looks like a duck and quacks....