RISHI Sunak is reportedly set to spend up to £13,000 a year heating his new swimming pool
The large sum means the Chancellor could be spending up to six-and-a-half times the average energy bill for a family home after the recent price rise, The Mirror reports.
Mr Sunak’s proposal to build a 12-metre by 5-metre swimming pool, gym and tennis court beside his historic North Yorkshire home was approved by Hambleton District Council last year, despite claims the development will harm the setting of the grade II listed property.
He is believed to be spending £250,000 on the new sport complex.
The annual energy bill for a three-bedroom home is £1,970.57, meaning he could spend as much as £12,959.09 on heating the pool if it is heated with mains electricity.
Locals have accused Mr Sunak of being ‘out of touch’ with reality due to the rumoured heating bill as the country grapples with a cost of living crisis.
Read more: What people in Rishi Sunak's constituency said about 'partygate'
One trader in Northallerton, the largest town in Mr Sunak’s Richmond constituency, told The Mirror: “That’s disgraceful. They should fill it up with mud.”
The family have lived at the 1826 former vicarage in Kirby Sigston, near Northallerton, since before Mr Sunak became Richmond MP in 2015.
They have previously had plans approved to convert outbuildings there to create guest accommodation.
After the planning application was lodged, political commentator Kevin Maguire said the luxury development made him feel “slightly sick” as Mr Sunak had “opposed feeding kids in the hungry holidays, threatened to take away £20 a week Universal Credit to about five million families and kept statutory sick pay down at £96.35 a week”.
But others have defended the Chancellor’s use of his funding.
When the proposal was unveiled last year, one reader said: “I assume the Chancellor is using his own money for the project and in spending this is creating welcome employment for the contractors who will then hopefully be paying income tax into the Treasury.
“Is the project really of public interest to warrant such a headline?”
It comes at a time when Mr Sunak has faced intense criticism over his failure to do more to help families struggling with the soaring cost of living, while he has hiked taxes to their highest levels since the 1950s.
While the Chancellor has publicly blamed Labour for the disclosures, some around him see the hand of Downing Street amid reports of renewed tensions between Boris Johnson and the man he put in charge of the nation’s finances.
It was also revealed that his family potentially saved tens of millions of pounds in taxes through his wife’s non-dom status.
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