Angela Rayner’s So-Called ‘Property Empire’

How newspapers turned Angela Rayner’s divorce and house purchase into a tax-dodging saga

You can’t fail to have seen all the news stories around Angela Rayner’s “property empire” and “tax dodging” so I thought I’d take a look at all the facts, as they are available at the time of writing.

At the start of the week, the Telegraph claimed: “Angela Rayner adds to property empire with purchase of holiday home”, following her purchase of a flat in Hove. The article began:

Angela Rayner has been criticised for having “three pads” after it emerged on Saturday night that she had added an £800,000 seaside apartment to her property empire.

Even with the information they had when they wrote that article, it was a disingenuous claim.

Rayner was thought to own a property in her constituency, Ashton-Under-Lyne, with her ex-husband. This is the home where her children live and attend college locally.

Her second ‘pad’ is the grace-and-favour property she is allowed to use as part of being the deputy Prime Minister and a senior government minister. She has use of a flat in Admiralty House, as have dozens of ministers in the past. 10, 11 and 12 Downing Street, Chequers and Speaker’s House are other examples of this type of arrangement. Rayner doesn’t own it and will no longer be allowed to live there if Starmer decides to change her role within government.

And finally, the flat she recently purchased in Hove.

That was the ‘property empire’ they were referring to.

However, within a couple of days, it emerged that Rayner no longer had any ownership stake in the Ashton property, having removed herself from the deeds shortly before buying the Hove flat.

So the property empire is actually one, albeit rather nice, flat in Hove.

Obviously, this wasn’t sufficient for the press to leave her alone; they needed to spin these facts into some sort of “tax dodge” by claiming that she removed her name from the deeds of the house she owned with her ex-husband during their divorce, purely to avoid paying extra stamp duty fees.

The story is a bit complicated, but ironically, all you need to do is read one of these articles and remove the Tory quotes, thinly veiled insinuations, and false hypotheticals, and you will find the facts buried deep.

I chose “Angela Rayner 'is a hypocrite and a freeloader': Tories blast Deputy PM after it emerges she 'dodged £40,000 in stamp duty' on her new seaside pad” as my article of choice!

The Facts on Home Ownership

• Angela Rayner owned a house in her Ashton-under-Lyne constituency where her children live with her ex-husband.

• They have been separated since 2020, but continue to share parenting, and she stays at the house with them when she’s able to.

• In 2023, they placed some of the home’s equity in trust for her three children.

• Several months ago, Rayner is reported to have removed herself from the deeds, meaning she no longer owns any share of that property.

• Rayner then bought her own property in Hove in East Sussex, shortly afterwards. This is the only property she now owns.

• Therefore, she is only liable to pay normal stamp duty rates and not the increased rates required on multi-home purchases. The £40K the Daily Mail is claiming she has ‘dodged’ is the extra £40K she would pay if she did own another property. But she doesn’t. And they knew that when they wrote that headline.

How many of you have ‘dodged’ that tax by only owning one property?!

The Facts on Primary Residence

Where it gets complicated is around her ‘primary residence’ for council tax purposes. Most people only have one property, and that is where you pay council tax and are on the electoral roll.

However, if you live between several properties (As MPs often have to) or own multiple properties, you may have to pay double the council tax on all other properties.

• Rayner maintains that the home she shares part-time with her ex-husband and children remains her primary residence in terms of paying council tax and being on the electoral roll, and she has informed Tameside Council of this.

• There is no requirement to own any share of a property for it to be designated as the primary residence.

• Brighton and Hove Council has also been notified by Rayner that her apartment there is a second home, for the purposes of council tax.

• Rayner is therefore liable for the second homes premium on council tax which was introduced in April 2025, which she pays in full.

• The council tax on her Admiralty House apartment is publicly funded under longstanding arrangements for official residences.

So Rayner only OWNS one property - the flat in Hove - and therefore only needs to pay regular stamp duty, which she has paid.

Rayner continues to use the house where her children live as her primary residence in her constituency, and pays extra council tax in Hove as a consequence.

Even the most rabid newspapers admit Rayner has done nothing wrong legally. However, they want to suggest she has done something morally questionable. So let’s take a look at a couple of possible scenarios and apply Occam’s Razor - the principle that suggests, when faced with competing explanations for the same phenomenon, the simplest explanation, the one with the fewest assumptions, is usually the best one to choose.

Scenario 1

Desperate to avoid paying an extra £40,000 in stamp duty, Rayner removed herself from the deeds of a £650,000 house, thus forfeiting up to £325,000 in value, and she did this all to avoid a tax, knowing that everything she does as Housing Minister and Deputy Prime Minister will be scrutinised to within an inch of its life.

Scenario 2

As part of the process of their divorce, Rayner finalised the arrangements with her husband regarding their shared home before buying a place of her own. We do not know what those arrangements were - he may have bought her out, or the house may have formed part of their settlement in some other way - but we do know she no longer owned a stake in it at the time she bought the Hove flat.

Which seems most likely?

How likely is it that Rayner, having been subject to months of media scrutiny over a previous housing arrangement (in which multiple police investigations and an HMRC investigation showed she did nothing wrong), would choose to take any action over houses without the most robust legal advice?

Despite the insinuations, she has also not done anything to “avoid” paying council tax, as she is paying double council tax in Hove, and regular council tax in Ashton-Under-Lyne.

What about Admiralty House

MPs who live in a constituency too far out of London to reasonably commute are entitled to claim the costs of living in London (Rent, council tax and utilities). Their constituency home is their primary residence, and their London home is secondary.

This was Rayner’s situation until December 2024, when she was given the use of Admiralty House, and she stopped renting her flat in London.

Tory chairman, Kevin Hollinrake, has now made a new claim that she has somehow broken the ministerial code in order to avoid paying the £2,034 annual council tax bill on Admiralty House!

He is suggesting that the home in her constituency where her children live, where she returns regularly, where she’s registered to vote and and where she pays council tax should not be considered her ‘primary residence’ because she spends most of her time in London as a minister. His argument follows that she should therefore be struck off the electoral register in her own constituency.

I don’t remember any calls for Sunak to be struck off the electoral register in his own constituency because he spent most of his time living in 10 Downing Street!

He seems to be suggesting she has created some elaborate ruse all to avoid paying the £2,034 per year council tax on Admiralty House. Seriously…?

In summary

All of the articles trying to suggest wrongdoing admit (usually in paragraph 8 or 9!) that there is no suggestion that Rayner has broken any laws. While trying to insinuate that she has somehow “avoided” taxes, there is no evidence that she has avoided anything. She has paid all the required taxes according to her situation. She just hasn’t paid the taxes required if her circumstances were different!

You have to tie yourself in considerable knots to conjure a scenario whereby she has done anything wrong.

When you take out the politics and the assumption of grifting or tax dodging, you’re left with a reasonably simple scenario of a woman going through a divorce and settling the legalities around the family home, before buying her own home.

Yes, it is made more complicated by the fact that she is an MP with a constituency presence and a Minister with a grace-and-favour house, which impacts council tax (all of which she pays as she should), but none of that amounts to her having committed a crime either legally or morally.

As ever, it’s so easy for the press to paint one picture with thinly veiled suggestions and insinuations, and it takes time and patience to wade through the claims to draw out the reality.

Even today, there is new ‘outrage’ over the fact that she put down a “whopping” 25% deposit on the flat to “benefit from more favourable interest rates”. Oh, and we also find out “The apartment includes a smart kitchen featuring marble-style countertops”

“Successful woman buys her own apartment following her divorce, and pays all the taxes she is liable for” should NOT be the basis of a full week’s worth of Daily Mail and Telegraph stories.

But that’s the media landscape we live in. These newspapers have never dedicated this level of coverage to the hundreds of MPs who actually own multiple properties (some in offshore trusts), to all the other MPs who spend more time doing their jobs in London than they do in the constituency homes, or to the MPs who never even bother visiting their constituencies…

Thank you to all my subscribers, especially those who chose to support me financially by upgrading to a paid subscription or by buying me a coffee. It really does keep me going, knowing people are finding value in what I do.

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Finally, I thought I’d share two recent media appearances:

• “Emma Monk, the one-woman debunking machine” (I love that title!😆) in the latest edition of the New World (formerly the New European)

• My second appearance on the James O’Brien show on LBC from the 12th August, which you can watch/listen to here: