Electoral Commission launches probe into Boris's flat refurbishment

The row over the refurbishment of Boris Johnson’s Downing Street flat has stepped up a gear this morning after the Electoral Commission launched a formal investigation. Following initial enquiries to determine who originally paid £58,000 towards the cost of the lavish refurbishment of the Prime Minister and his fiancée Carrie Symonds’s flat, the commission has concluded there are ‘reasonable grounds to suspect that an offence or offences may have occurred’. As a result, a formal investigation is now underway to establish whether this is the case.

So what are they looking for? The government announced last week that Johnson has footed the bill for the works, with Liz Truss insisting on Sunday that the Prime Minister had paid for the renovations out of his own pocket. In doing this, there was an attempt to suggest this was case closed.

So far Downing Street has been incredibly tight-lipped

However, the issue relates to who footed the bill originally. Were party funds used? And, if so, were they declared in the correct way? Dominic Cummings has alleged on his blog that the Prime Minister was, at one point, considering a funding plan that could be described as ‘unethical, foolish (and) possibly illegal’.