Have they stood up and announced you shouldnāt do something, then done it themselves?
Can you please point specifically to where Rayner said this either as recorded in Hansard or elsewhere? I'd like to see exactly what was said.
The issue of multiple homes, whether they are tenanted or kept as holiday homes, is whether the practice is causing considerable disadvantage to a body of other people, for example, people born in rural communities priced out of the market by holiday-home owners; people wanting to profit from buy-to-let snapping up all the entry-level properties such that first time buyers donāt get a look in and so on. Once upon a time, buying a small apartment was how many young people started out. Nowadays, any new development has a proliferation of To Let signs outside before the paint on the walls is dry.
The price allegedly paid by Rayner for the Brighton apartment, said to be over £700,000, would be out of reach of most people. The average property value in the UK is £291,000, Brighton has a large commuter population. I wager the people she competed with to buy the property were probably commuters with well-paid jobs in the City.
Search on RightMove for properties in a five mile radius of Brighton between £500,000 and £800,000 and it returns 42 pages of results. Hardly a shortage of properties for sale.
Politicians know their time in high office may be short. If the Labour critics are right, the current Goverment will be out of power in 2029. A Cabinet reshuffle anytime would see Rayner lose the use of the grace and favour apartment. Meantime, she has a right to use her income to buy somewhere to spend what I imagine is very little spare time in privacy. To my knowledge, she hasnāt introduced any legislation that stops people from buying second homes.
ONS stats. In 2021, 3.2 million (5.3%) usual residents in England and Wales reported that they had a second address where they spend 30 days or more a year. 3.2 million people.
This number increased from 2.9 million (5.2%) in 2011.
In 2011, the peak age for owning a holiday home was 64 years. In 2021 this was 73 years, suggesting that people approachng retirement age who already owned a holiday home in 2011 still owned it ten years years later.
I find it ironic that a forum which caters for the very demographic which is more likely to own a holiday home than any other age group is critical of someone owning a holiday home.
Iād like to see a Venn diagram showing where people's political allegiances and those criticising Rayner for this action coincide.
I agree this is storm in teacup. I smell Richard Holden at work; the MP behind the Beergate allegations; the MP (with James Daly) behind all the fuss over her council house and CGT.
Daly lost his seat in 2024. Holden was parachuted into Tory stronghold Basildon and Billericay and scraped home in by just 20 votes losing a majority of over 28,000. Not a popular man whose raison dāetre appears to be digging dirt on Rayner. No surprise that heās in a relationship with Kate Ferguson, political editor for The Sun.