Yahoo Finance Pimlico Plumbers founder to sell ￡12m penthouse as he flees Britain ahead of tax raid
Britain’s richest plumber Charlie Mullins has put his ￡12m London penthouse up for sale as he prepares to flee the UK to avoid a Labour tax raid.
The Pimlico Plumbers founder, who bought the luxury flat with his windfall from the ￡145m sale of his business in 2021, said he is ready to have “no assets in the UK whatsoever”.
Mr Mullins has hired an agent to find a buyer for his apartment – which neighbours a property owned by Tom Jones and has its own bar – as he looks to instead pour his cash into Spain and Dubai.
He said: “I’ll have no investments here, no bank account here. It’s all in the process now. I think my last tax bill is January and that’s me done.”
Chancellor Rachel Reeves has warned that she will have to make “difficult decisions” in her first Budget in order to fix the nation’s finances. Sir Keir Starmer said last month that those with the “broadest shoulders” would carry the heaviest burden, triggering fears of a tax raid on the rich.
Mr Mullins said he was putting his flat up for sale because of concerns that Labour will raise death taxes. He said: “I’m selling my property because of the inheritance tax. It’s a ￡12m property – if I lose ￡6m, I’m brown bread. Family would go mad.”
The entrepreneur instead plans to put his money into properties in Spain, among other investments.
Mr Mullins, a former Tory donor who now backs Reform UK, said: “Anybody that’s wealthy can jump ship whenever they want, and they will do.”
Ceri Vokes, a partner at law firm Withers Worldwide, said last week that a number of her wealthiest clients were moving overseas.
“People with hundreds of millions of pounds [are leaving] because changes can be more impactful for them,” she said, adding that Italy, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Switzerland were among the most popular destinations.
Mr Mullins’ comments come just weeks before he opens a new London plumbing business, WeFix, after a non-compete clause with Pimlico’s new owners ends on Monday.
The new venture is pitched as “the Harrods of the handyman world”. While Mr Mullins is the founder and chairman of WeFix, he is not on the payroll and is not the owner, with all the money coming from his children’s family trust. His eldest son Scott will be chief executive, while his eldest grandson Ashley will be managing director.
Seventy-one-year-old Mr Mullins said: “If I’d have known Labour was going to get in, I wouldn’t have opened up here. I would have gone to Dubai. But it was too far down the road. W started [planning for] this two years ago. If we get too much setback with Labour, we’ll move to Dubai.”
Mr Mullins, a long-time critic of working from home, said he was concerned about the Government’s plans to overhaul workers’ rights.
The package is expected to include full employment rights from day one on the job, meaning employers can be taken to tribunals much earlier, and flexible working as a default.
Mr Mullins said he feared the changes would position employers as “the enemy” and could backfire by putting companies off hiring new people.
“You can’t have an employee running the business,” he said. “If I have to go down the working from home route then we’ll close the business down.”
If job applicants “start talking about unions, working from home [or] four days a week” in an interview then “they’re not the people we’re looking for,” Mr Mullins said. Staff at WeFix will instead be offered a share of the profits after more than a year’s service.
A self-styled plumber to the rich and famous, Mr Mullins grew up in poverty on the Rockingham Estate in London’s Elephant and Castle and left school at 15 with no qualifications.
He started Pimlico Plumbers from the basement of an estate agent in Pimlico in 1979, selling it three years ago for ￡145m to Neighborly, a home services outfit owned by US private equity giant KKR. He had a 90pc stake in the business, with the rest owned by his son.
A spokesman for the Business Department said: “This Government backs wealth creators and will give firms the economic security they need to invest. We are committed to finding the balance between improving workers’ rights while supporting the brilliant businesses that pay people’s wages.
“That’s why we’re working in close partnership with business and civil society, to ensure our Make Work Pay plan is designed around increasing productivity and creating the right conditions for businesses to support sustained economic growth.”