Government flats have been in the news a fair bit recently. Much ink was spilled over the £88,000 Boris and Carrie shelled out to interior designer Lulu Lytle to do up the Prime Minister’s flat at the end of last year. But now it seems the Johnsons got off lightly, judging by the current exorbitant rate going for Downing Street apartments.
A Freedom of Information request by Steerpike has shed light on a previously little-known arrangement between government departments over the Chancellor’s official flat, which is based in No. 10, adjacent to the Prime Minister’s larger abode next door in No. 11. This recent practice of residing in the flats traditionally used by their counterparts dates from the New Labour era, when Tony Blair’s family grabbed the bigger Chancellor’s flat from the then unmarried Gordon Brown.
Now it transpires that, under a Whitehall quirk, Rishi Sunak’s Treasury pays a contribution to Michael Gove’s Cabinet Office for the space used by HM Treasury and the Chancellor of the Exchequer within the Downing Street estate, including maintenance of the No.
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