Charlotte Atkins and the repair bill that included £20,000 for windows

Charlotte Atkins has admitted making a mistake in claiming for the garden.

Over four years, Miss Atkins carried out extensive work on her detached Edwardian red brick constituency house in Leek, Staffordshire.

Her first major application to the fees office came in March 2005 when she claimed £4,000 for pulling down and rebuilding the chimney and £15,000 for window repairs and replacement.

When challenged, the MP said she had not realised the windows were rotten when she bought the property.

Officials agreed that the chimney was essential, but argued that the large scale renovations on the windows went “beyond the definition for allowable work set out in the Green Book”.

Notes of a conversation between the MP and the fees office said: “I think she accepted, but did not necessarily agree with, the idea that there was some benefit to her in the window replacement programme.

“I suggested that a 50/50 sharing of the costs might be appropriate. She neither agreed nor disagreed with this proposition.”

Miss Atkins’s memory of the conversation was slightly different: “We agreed what was acceptable under the Green Book – ie 50 per cent of the window repair – and I was entirely happy with that.”

Ultimately, she was reimbursed £4,017 for the chimney and £7,697 for the windows.

In March 2007, she claimed nearly £4,000 for work on the bathroom, replacing the shower and bath and three months later claimed a further £5,000 for tiling, a new bathroom suite and labour costs.

In October of that year she claimed £1,884 for gardening work, which was refused and in February last year claimed a further £5,000 to repair her bay windows.

Miss Atkins said the bathroom was more than 30 years old and had to be completely gutted, a project for which she used a local supplier.

She insisted that the work on the bay window was vital as it was falling away from the house, but admitted making a mistake in claiming for the garden.

Miss Atkins said she had claimed £120 a month because she knew that garden maintenance was acceptable under the Green Book rules.

However her attempts to claim £1,884 for plants, the purchasing of sandstone rocks and four days of manual labour were rebuffed.

She said: “I made a mistake in submitting the £1,884 bill for garden remodelling so the fees office rightly pointed out they could not pay for such remodelling work.”

As part of her defence, the MP for Staffordshire Moorlands made a barbed comment about the Conservative leader’s second home claims.

“I bought my second home cheaply because it required some repair so my mortgage interest claim was low but my repair bill was high,” Miss Atkins said. “If I had chosen to buy a fully refurbished property I would have paid a very high mortgage interest but this would not have been questioned.

“David Cameron’s additional costs allowance claim is almost entirely swallowed up by mortgage interest but this is not considered in any way inappropriate.”

Charlotte Atkins

Job: backbench Labour MP

Salary: £64,766

Total second home claims

2004-05: £20,902

2005-06: £21,347

2006-07: £22,110

2007-08: £23,083