The new Conservative Party leader and Britain's latest prime minister Rishi Sunak. Photo / AP
The new Conservative Party leader and Britain's latest prime minister Rishi Sunak. Photo / AP
Rishi Sunak’s wife and daughters could divide their time between Downing Street and the couple’s home in west London after moving out of Number 11 in April to be closer to the children’s school.
Akshata Murty and the couple’s daughters Krishna and Anoushka chose to live in the family’s five-bedroomed townhouse in Kensington, west London, rather than staying in the relatively cramped grace and favour flat in Downing Street in Sunak’s final months as chancellor.
Sunak split his time between his official residence and his family home, an arrangement that he could decide to continue now he has landed the top job.
Having already lived in Downing Street, there will be no novelty value for his family in moving into Number 10, and the Sunaks will have to decide whether moving their daughters - and their Labrador, Nova - back into the flat above the shop will be too disruptive just six months after they moved out.
Either way, it is understood that the family will keep their home in Kensington to give them some flexibility in their living arrangements.
A spokesman for the Conservative Party leader was unable to say where the family would live, but pointed out that in the last leadership contest he told an interviewer his family had been happy living in Downing Street and he expected to move them back there if he became prime minister.
When Murty and the two girls moved out in April, there was speculation that they had done so to avoid media attention over Murty’s non-domiciled tax status, which she later relinquished.
Sunak said at the time: “The decision was nothing to do with what had happened. It was everything to do with the fact that our eldest daughter was in her last term of primary school and wanted to be able to walk to school by herself every day.”
The Sunaks’ younger daughter Anoushka still attends the £22,000-a-year private school in west London, but Krishna started boarding school in September, meaning she will spend little time in Downing Street even if the family move back in.
10 Downing Street, in London. Photo / AP
When he resigned as chancellor in July, Sunak told other fathers in the school playground how much he was enjoying spending more time with his daughters and being able to do the school run like other parents.
His new job will severely restrict his ability to do that, but he will be able to spend weekends at Chequers with his family, as well as spending time at their London home and their constituency home in North Yorkshire.
PM will be urged to move to No 10 by police
The Metropolitan Police, which is responsible for the safety of prime ministers, is likely to urge Sunak to move his family into the secure environs of Downing Street, though with a £730 million fortune at their disposal, the Sunaks will be able to beef up security at their mews house even if they have to pay for it themselves.
Sunak will also have to decide whether to draw his full prime ministerial salary of £164,080 or to take a voluntary pay cut - as David Cameron did - as a symbolic gesture in the current cost of living crisis.
Murty, the daughter of the billionaire co-founder of the Indian telecoms firm Infosys, is not as outgoing as her husband and has always stayed in the background during his time as a minister.
In August Sunak told the Sunday Times: “I’m incredibly tidy, she’s very messy. I’m much more organised, she is more spontaneous.
“She is not going to love me for saying this, but I’ll be honest with you, she is not big on the whole tidying thing. She is a total nightmare, clothes everywhere…and shoes, oh God shoes.”
Prime Ministerial spouses, including Boris Johnson’s wife Carrie, have been given personal assistants paid for out of party funds, another tradition that is likely to be dropped by the Sunaks given their personal wealth.
