The Chelsea Society is closely watching the debate around the principle of taxing properties over £2m as its residents will be significantly affected. The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, like its neighbours in Westminster, has attracted a high influx of foreign investors with demand outstripping supply – making house prices beyond anyone’s expectations or any sense of what could be seen as normal – ironically this overshadows the community of people who live here – and for whom the rise in their property value is not something they can realise unless they move out – and that is the issue – as a country we have traded our ‘sense of home’ for ‘dealing in property’ and therefore we now find ourselves being used as pawns in the politician’s games of balancing the books. For those who do not intend to move, nor have an income that could cover the level of tax suspected – these are worrying times indeed.
