How Westminster Housing Privilege Collides with Hartlepool’s Rental Crisis...
- teessidetoday
- Dec 14
- 4 min read
Updated: Dec 15
A Labour MP has claimed back Nearly Four Times more in Rent that his Constituents could ever receive while Housing Support in his own town Lags Behind...
14th December 2025
At a time when ordinary people living in Hartlepool are being priced out of their own town, the revelations around a Labour MPs’ accommodation expenses exposes a stark and deeply uncomfortable hypocrisy at the heart of British politics.
The average monthly rent in Hartlepool for a property now stands at approximately £550 per calendar month. For many local residents, that figure alone represents a considerable financial strain. For those on low incomes, benefits, or insecure work, it's often completely unattainable. Yet against this backdrop, Hartlepool’s own MP, Jonathan Brash, has claimed £23,578.00 in rent on taxpayers’ expenses (That's 3.6 times MORE than what a person on a low income could claim on Universal Credit for Housing Costs over the year)...
To put that into perspective, £23,578 equates to more than three and a half years’ rent for a local household paying £550 per month. It is an amount that many Hartlepool residents will never see pass through their bank accounts in that time-frame—let alone have covered entirely by the public purse.
Local Housing Allowance: Frozen While Rents Soar
While MP's are insulated from the housing market through generous expense systems, local people on low incomes are being left having to navigate a system that's become increasingly punitive and detached from reality.
Local Housing Allowance (LHA) rates—used to calculate how much support low-income tenants receive—has remained virtually unmoved for years. During that same period, private rents in Hartlepool have risen sharply, largely driven by demand, reduced supply, and letting agents constantly trying to lift the ceiling price on rents in predominately low income areas.
The result is both predictable and devastating, with tenants facing growing shortfalls between rent and Housing Support, with some low income families being forced into debt, rent arrears, and in some cases, Families being pushed out of the town altogether, severing community ties and support networks.
This is not by accident either. It's a direct consequence of policy decisions taken by people who are entirely shielded from their effects, with politicians who simply dont understand the changing property market within their own town.
The Hollowing Out of the Private Rental Market
Compounding the problem even further is the steady disappearance of decent, family-sized private sector homes in Hartlepool. Large numbers of properties have been carved up into controversial Houses in Multiple Occupation (HMO's). While HMO's are often presented as a solution to housing need, their unchecked expansion has had serious consequences in a town that already suffers from a lack of decent quality homes, with a considerable reduction in properties suitable for families and long-term residents over the last 3-4 years causing increased pressure on local housing services, as well as growing community tensions & A concentration of poverty and instability in specific neighbourhoods.
For landlords and investors, HMO's are seen as highly lucrative. For local people trying to rent a normal home at an affordable price, they're becoming a serious problem.
Once again, those making the rules & claiming the huge fees to cover their Westminster homes remain unaffected. MP's do not compete for shrinking housing stock. They don't face bidding wars for substandard properties. They don't have to choose between rent and heating.
What makes this situation particularly galling is the moral posturing that so often accompanies debates on welfare, housing benefit, and “personal responsibility”.
Time and again, politicians lecture the public about tightening belts, living within means, and accepting “hard choices”. Yet the same political class seemingly operates under a system where claiming tens of thousands of pounds in rent is considered routine, legitimate, and unquestionable.
There is no similar scrutiny on their claims on their Second Homes. No cap tied to local averages. No expectation that MP's live as their constituents do.
The message sent to Hartlepool is therefore clear: sacrifice is for you, not for us.
This disparity feeds directly into public anger and disengagement. When people see their MP claiming sums that dwarf local housing realities, while doing little to address frozen LHA rates, the spread of HMO's, or the erosion of affordable housing, resentment against the very MP claiming those housing costs back is always likely to increase.
It reinforces the notion that Westminster operates as a closed system—one that looks after its own, while communities like Hartlepool are left to manage the decline.
Housing is not a luxury. It is a basic necessity. Yet for too many in Hartlepool, it has become precarious, unaffordable, and insecure.
Until MP's are required to live under the same constraints as the people they represent—or at the very least show genuine restraint and leadership—the charge of hypocrisy will continue to stick.
And rightly so.
