ANGELA Rayner’s family lawyers increased the value of her constituency home by £150,000 after they claimed an “error” was made, documents show.
The Sun on Sunday can reveal that Land Registry papers show the official value of Ms Rayner’s Ashton-under-Lyne house was ramped up from £487,500 to £650,000 in April last year.
This is more than £100,000 above the amount any other similar sized home in the area has sold for.
The fresh revelation will raise further questions about Ms Rayner’s property affairs and why it took a year for the “error” in the valuation to emerge.
It represents her second mistake after she claimed on Friday she had not intended to pay less stamp duty on her new seaside apartment in Sussex.
The higher valuation on the Greater Manchester property meant Ms Rayner could sell her 25 per cent stake in the family home to her son’s trust for £162,500.
She used the cash as a deposit on her new £800,000 Hove flat.
At the time of the valuation, the then-Deputy PM was already under police investigation over claims she had not paid enough tax on her former Stockport home.
She was later cleared over any wrongdoing in that affair.
The official valuation document, seen by The Sun on Sunday, was sent by Swiitch lawyers to the Land Registry in April 2024.
It states that the original value submitted in May 2023 “was incorrect” and accounted for only 75 per cent of the home’s worth.
It contained an apology for the “original error”.
Conservative Party chairman Kevin Hollinrake said: “This raises fresh questions for Angela Rayner that she must answer.
“With the tax authorities already investigating, now is the time for her to be completely transparent about this whole affair and put all the information in the public domain.
“Her resignation does not absolve her of responsibility.
“The public rightfully expect and deserve answers about how the former Deputy Prime Minister was conducting herself in office.
“We will continue to push for these answers.”
The fact Ms Rayner had bought the flat — her third home including her grace-and-favour Westminster pad — was first reported by The Sun on Sunday two weeks ago.
She was forced to quit as Deputy PM on Friday after admitting she had underpaid stamp duty on her Hove property by £40,000.
HMRC officials are investigating over that — and The Sun on Sunday can today reveal HMRC is now expected to look at the Ashton-under-Lyne property too.
The re-valuation upwards could have been a mistake, or it could possibly have been a dawning realisation that her 25 per cent stake would not be worth enough.
Tax expert James Quarmby
Ms Rayner is expected to be told to open her books to investigators as it was her failure to get proper tax advice in relation to her ongoing interest in the family home’s trust that led her to paying the wrong amount of stamp duty — £30,000 instead of £70,000.
An HMRC source said: “Angela Rayner has to allow HMRC access to her personal finances. She’s not exempt from scrutiny.’’
Ms Rayner referred herself to HMRC over her stamp duty error while asking the PM’s standards adviser Sir Laurie Magnus to look into her ministerial conduct.
Local estate agents have valued Ms Rayner’s four-bedroom family home at between £527,000 and £620,000.
Property records from Rightmove show that of the 45 properties sold in her road in the past five years, the most expensive was a three-bed semi detached home that went for £265,000 in 2022.
The most expensive four-bed detached property sold within a mile of her home in the past two years went for £490,000 in January last year.
Ms Rayner’s imposing red-brick home is larger than others in the street and is understood to include a substantial garden.
The trust that the cash went to was set up after a compensation payout for clinical negligence by the NHS following complications in her son’s birth in 2008 and with the care that followed.
Ms Rayner launched the lawsuit against Stockport NHS Trust Foundation in 2018.
Her son received a payout from the Trust in 2020, and it was this that was used to purchase his share in the family home in Ashton-under-Lyne.
Top tax expert James Quarmby said it was possible that Rayner “needed a number” to be able to purchase another flat.
He said because the sale of her share in Ashton was down to a “connected party transaction”, the ex-minister had greater control over how much she could sell her stake for.
Mr Quarmby told The Sun on Sunday: “The re-valuation upwards could have been a mistake, or it could possibly have been a dawning realisation that her 25 per cent stake would not be worth enough.
“The reason she could do that so easily is because in effect she was both buying and selling.”
A spokesman for the conveyancing firm Swiitch said: “At the time of lodging papers with the land registry regarding the Ashton- Under-Lyne property, an administrative error was made which bears no wider significance.
“The error was identified, and the matter was resolved satisfactorily with the land registry.”
Ms Rayner’s team said a third party had valued the property.