New photos show Rishi Sunak’s lavish private swimming pool is coming along nicely - while Brits face a bills bombshell.
The Tory leadership hopeful and his wife won permission last year to build a new stone building with a gym, a 12-metre by 5-metre swimming pool and four shower.
Now the building - accompanied by a 27-metre tennis court - is at an advanced stage behind the gated Grade II-listed manor they bought for £1.5m in 2015.
It comes after we revealed the swimming pool is going up just as the MP’s local baths in Richmond, North Yorkshire, look set to close because of rocketing energy bills.
Austin Gordon, general manager at Richmond Pool, said the bills it faced were “horrendous” and it would be forced to close, like thousands of others, without help.
Mr Gordon said: “It is ironic Rishi has just built a pool for himself, while his constituents face losing theirs.”
The price cap on domestic energy bills has already risen to nearly £2,000 a year and is projected to top £3,600 from October and £4,200 from January.
Mr Sunak and Akshata Murthy, daughter of an Indian billionaire, were already expected to splash out up to £13,000 a year heating the pool before October’s price cap hike.
Built in 1826 in an isolated hamlet, their home boasts a sweeping driveway and large private pond.
No neighbours objected to the pool and the work has not involved any taxpayer cash.
But locals have previously hit out at the decision, with trader, who was packing away his stall, telling us: “That’s disgraceful. They should fill it up with mud.”
Pauline Porter, 69, told us previously: “It is disgusting, especially in these times. They have no idea how normal people live. They just don’t care.”
Mr Sunak could be restricted from filling up his pool if a hosepipe ban is imposed in his area at the time it’s finished.
But more focus has been on the lavish spending by the couple - who feature in the Sunday Times Rich List - at a time when he faces furious calls to do more.
The former Chancellor said he is likely to add “a few hundred pounds” to cost-of-living payments if he becomes Prime Minister on September 5.
But consumer champion Martin Lewis has said he will have to go much further to deal with enormous projected rises in the price cap.
Mr Lewis said Mr Sunak “will effectively need, if he wants to make this work, to double the numbers especially for the poorest from £1,200 to £2,400.
“Because the increase has doubled the gap over where it was previously”.
He has also blasted rival Liz Truss ' plans to cut taxes and green levies as a "sticking plaster on a gaping wound".
