- She was registered separately from her then-husband Mark on the electoral roll
- Ms Rayner insisted she lived at a council house under the right-to-buy scheme
Angela Rayner was facing mounting questions over her housing arrangements last night after it was claimed that a council paid thousands of pounds to upgrade a property she says she did not live in – to make it suitable for her family.
Labour‘s Deputy Leader became embroiled in controversy after The Mail on Sunday revealed a mystery over the fact that she was registered separately from her then-husband Mark on the electoral roll for five years after they married – with Ms Rayner insisting that she remained living at a council house she had bought under the right-to-buy scheme.
Greater Manchester Police said last night that they would provide an update in the coming days about calls by Tory MPs for them to investigate the matter, which is revealed in a new biography of Ms Rayner by Lord Ashcroft that will be serialised in The Mail on Sunday and Daily Mail later this month.
Ms Rayner was listed on the electoral roll at her former council house at Vicarage Road, Stockport, for the five years after she married Mark in 2010. He was listed a mile away at a house he bought in Lowndes Lane.
After neighbours said Ms Rayner had actually been living with her husband and her three children at Lowndes Lane, she stuck to her story and stated that she and Mark had ‘maintained separate residences’ until 2015.
On Monday, Ms Rayner said of the Vicarage Road property: ‘I owned my own home, lived there, paid the bills there and was registered to vote there, prior to selling the house in 2015.’
Yet when she re-registered her younger two children’s births following her marriage, she wrote on their birth certificates that she lived at 126 Lowndes Lane.
If so, she could face a criminal case for a false declaration on the electoral roll – and be liable for capital gains tax on the sale of the Vicarage Road house, which made her a £48,500 profit.
The mystery, which has led to her being dubbed ‘Two Homes Rayner’, deepened further after sources told The Mail on Sunday that the council helped to pay for work at Mr Rayner’s house – not the one his wife was listed at – to drop the kerb.
The sources said that, as one of Ms Rayner’s children is registered blind, the money was provided under a Disabled Facilities Grant. Photographs from 2012 show that the work had been completed by then.
Last night Labour confirmed the kerb work had been carried out at Lowndes Lane, but declined to go into details about the funding.
Labour sources have also indicated that Ms Rayner paid council tax at Vicarage Road – but did not say if she received the single- person discount of 25 per cent.
In all, three Lowndes Lane neighbours have now said Ms Rayner lived there with her husband and children, and not at Vicarage Road.
According to one: ‘Angela and Mark lived there as a couple with her son Ryan and their two young children after they got married, there was no doubt about that at all. I remember when the loft was converted, Angela described herself as the project manager.’
When the Lowndes Lane house was sold in 2016, the estate agency’s pictures showed a child’s bedroom complete with cuddly toys and a Thomas the Tank Engine toy.
In the back garden were a trampoline and playhouse, and the loft had been converted into a bedroom – which neighbours said was used by her teenage son from a previous relationship.
By contrast, sale pictures of Vicarage Road the previous year showed a double bed in each of the two bedrooms – and in the garden a bare patch of overgrown grass and a patio with weeds sprouting through the paving slabs.
Several long-term residents of Vicarage Road told Mail Online last week that they had seen Ms Rayner there only once between her marriage to Mark and when it was sold.
They also said that in 2014 Ms Rayner had described herself as the ‘landlady’ of the property – her brother Darren was seen living there – when she threatened to take neighbours to court in a disagreement over a smashed window.
A Labour spokesperson said: ‘Angela Rayner has set out her family’s circumstances and has taken expert tax and legal advice which confirms that no capital gains tax was payable on the sale of her home.’
A week has passed since we revealed Angela Rayner’s unusual living arrangements.
She maintains that after she married in 2010, she remained in the council house she had bought (under a right-to-buy policy she has criticised) rather than living in her husband’s house.
This is contradicted by neighbours, and by the fact that she re-registered her children’s birth in 2010 at her husband’s address.
Now we learn the council funded improvements which helped her children at that house – not at the home she claimed to live in.
It is an offence to declare the wrong address on the electoral roll. Ms Rayner has refused to explain her arrangements, but with even the BBC now covering the story – it took six days, but they got there eventually – this position will not hold.