The family of the recently appointed British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, will move back into a smaller apartment above No. 10 Downing Street since they were “quite happy there,” according to a statement from his spokesperson.
According to the official website, British prime leaders have lived in No. 10 Downing Street since 1735. It serves as the prime minister’s official house, place of business, and venue for entertaining royalty and other dignitaries.
Sunak lived in the apartment when serving as former prime minister Boris Johnson’s chancellor, together with his wife Akshata Murty and two daughters.
The larger apartment above No. 11, which is nominally reserved for the chancellor, has been home to a number of Prime Ministers in recent years, particularly those with children.
A Downing Street official said on Wednesday when asked why Sunak chose No. 10 rather: “They were extremely happy there.” The Downing Street residences are typically kept out of sight of the general population.
If elected, Sunak stated in an interview with The Times in August that the family would “probably simply go back into the flat where we used to live, to be honest.”
It’s great, we already decorated it, he remarked. Because the four-bedroom apartment at No. 11 is significantly larger than the one above No. 10, several of Johnson’s predecessors, according to the BBC, chose to reside there.
The first to make the transition was Tony Blair, his wife Cherie, and their family, who traded homes with Gordon Brown, who was still single at the time. It said that the Blairs converted the area into their home.
The public yearly contributes 30,000 pounds to the prime minister for housing.
The prime minister’s press secretary answered, “Not that I’m aware of,” when asked if Sunak and his family would redecorate. Sunak’s family moved to a house in west London in April so they could be closer to their children’s school before Sunak quit as chancellor.
During his last few months as chancellor, Sunak split his time between the family home and his government residence. In an interview with The Times, Sunak stated that the April move from Downing Street was required since his oldest daughter was about to start her last year of primary school and was expected to be able to walk to school alone every day.
According to the BBC report, it is much larger than it appears from the front and expands from the hall with the checkered floor just beyond the front door into a labyrinth of chambers and staircases.
On Tuesday, Sunak was elected as the nation’s first prime minister of Indian heritage. A 42-year-old former investment banker has been the prime minister of Britain for the first time in 210 years. He is also Britain’s first Hindu prime minister.