Nigel Farage faces questions over who funded £885,000 Clacton constituency home

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage faces pressure to account for how his partner paid for a £885,000 home after a BBC investigation raised further questions about his previous explanation.

The Clacton MP has denied avoiding more than £44,000 in additional stamp duty on the purchase of the constituency home by putting it in his partner Laure Ferrari’s name, saying that she bought it with her own funds.

He suggested that she was able to afford to buy the four-bedroom home, which was bought without a mortgage, because she comes from a wealthy French family.

However, the BBC has examined French property and company records and has been unable to find evidence that Ferrari’s parents have the means to give their daughter a significant contribution towards the purchase of the home.

It comes as Farage revealed that he has taken specialist legal advice from a taxation King’s Counsel on the purchase despite claiming he wasn’t involved.

If the Reform leader was the source of funds used for the home, which he has previously denied, it would be legal for his partner to use them to buy the property in her name and pay the lower rate of stamp duty.

But it would open Farage to charges of hypocrisy and seeking to avoid tax, particularly after he criticised former Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner last week for avoiding stamp duty.

He said his partner was the sole legal and beneficial owner of the property.

The property at the centre of questions for the Reform leader is a four-bedroom house with a heated swimming pool in Frinton-on-Sea, Essex.

It was bought on 11 November last year. A few days earlier, amid questions in a television interview about how many times he had been to Clacton, Farage said he had “just exchanged contracts on a house that I’ll be living in there”.

“Is that good enough? How much time does Keir Starmer spend in his constituency?,” he added.

It later emerged that the £885,000 home had been bought by his partner Laure Ferrari who is listed on Land Registry documents as the sole owner. It was bought without borrowing any money for a mortgage.

The ownership of the home prompted accusations that Farage had structured the purchase in order to avoid paying additional tax.

A further £44,250 would have been due if he was an owner of the property because a stamp duty surcharge for second home purchase would have been due.

Mr Farage owns his former marital home in Kent and two further investment properties in the county through his company Thorn in the Side.

He also declares ownership of a Surrey property on his House of Commons register of interests.

The Reform leader has insisted that he didn’t give her money towards the purchase and suggested she was able afford it because of family wealth.

“I haven’t lent money to anybody. I didn’t give her money,” he told The Mirror newspaper.

“She comes from a very successful French family and she can afford it herself. It’s convenient, it works, and she loves it there.”

BBC News has been investigating the claim.

Her father ran a haulage business in Strasbourg, France for many years but the company was liquidated in 2020 and had more liabilities than assets at the time.

Neighbours on the business site where it was located confirmed it hadn’t been sold.

“Mr Ferrari was a discreet person who didn’t really talk to anyone here. His wife was also very discreet,” one local businessman told BBC News.

“As far as I know, the company was liquidated when Ferrari retired years ago.”

Her parents, Bertrand and Chantal, live in a flat worth around 350,000 euros (£302,000) in a Strasbourg suburb.

They, and their two daughters, co-own the flat, which was bought in 2006, as well as the haulage company’s former business premises. These premises are rented out, with a local estate agent estimating it would generate no more than 8-9,000 euros a month.

Their daughter Laure, who is 45, met Farage when she was working as a waitress in the late 2000s.

She has spoken of how, with the help of a bank loan, she previously set up a clothes shop called Urban Flavour but the business failed and she had to turn to waitressing to make ends meet.

In recent years, she has been the director of a consultancy, now called Baxter Laois Limited, which is the registered owner of Farage’s gin brand.

However, the company’s latest accounts show limited activity, with more than £10,000 owed to creditors and just £1,000 in assets.

A petition to wind up the company was filed in August and withdrawn earlier this week.

According to Land Registry records, Ms Ferrari used a London-based conveyancing firm of solicitors to help with her purchase.

Despite insisting he wasn’t involved in the transaction, Farage recently hired his own expert tax lawyer in an apparent bid to end questions about his own tax affairs.

His solicitors, Grosvenor Law, said they had received written advice from a leading tax King’s Counsel.

“Grosvenor Law has received written advice from leading tax King’s Counsel.

“That advice concludes that there is no underpayment of SDLT (Stamp Duty Land Tax), that SDLT paid was properly calculated and that there is no basis to suggest there has been any improper avoidance or evasion of tax in respect of the purchase.”

Farage did not explain why he had sought specialist tax advice on the purchase, which the BBC understands was done recently rather than at the time of purchase.

The law firm does not represent his partner, who was the person listed as buying the property.

It is legal for an unmarried person to gift or otherwise transfer wealth to their partner for them to buy a property in their own name and doing so does not incur stamp duty.

Farage has though faced accusations that he has acted hypocritically and sought to avoid tax if he played a role in financing the purchase of his constituency home in his partner’s name.

In a statement, a spokesman for Farage said: “Laure Ferrari is the sole legal and beneficial owner of the property.

“It belongs solely to Laure and was purchased with funds which belong to her. All taxes were properly paid. Nigel has no financial interest in the property whatsoever.”

But the spokesman refused to say whether the money used to buy the property had come from funds the MP had earned, even if they had been passed to his partner and so belonged to her at the time of the purchase last November.

He also failed to explain why his comments about his partner’s family wealth did not appear to match their financial situation.

Farage joined other rival politicians in criticising the former deputy prime minister Angela Rayner after she was embroiled in a second home row which led to her resignation last week.

In a social media post he said: “You can’t be housing secretary and avoid £40,000 pounds’ worth of stamp duty. It’s just as simple as that.”

And addressing his party’s conference last Friday after Rayner had resigned, he attacked the Labour Party: “It screams of entitlement. It screams to a government that, despite all the promises that this would be a new different kind of politics, is as bad, if not worse, than the one that went before.”

Labour Party chair Anna Turley said: “There are now far too many unanswered questions about the house he stays in while in Clacton.

“He must urgently come clean with the public as to whether he financially contributed towards the purchase of this property or if he has any financial interest in it.

“Misleading the public for political gain about buying a constituency home is appalling in itself.

“But if he deliberately put in place this arrangement to avoid paying his fair share of tax that would be even worse.

“Farage has had plenty to say about other people’s tax affairs recently, so it’s only right that he provides evidence to prove he has told the full story here. It’s the least the British public would expect.”

Liberal Democrat Cabinet Office spokesperson Sarah Olney said: “Nigel Farage has serious questions to answer over this.

“After spending days attacking others over their tax arrangements he now needs to be frank and honest about his own.”

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