There are parts of Southampton’s Ocean Village, the marina development where the health secretary Jeremy Hunt has bought seven new apartments, that feel as antiseptic as any hospital ward.
Originally a working dock dating back to the mid-19th century, it was redeveloped into a leisure marina in the mid 1980s and now – after almost as many false dawns as Hunt himself – looks pristine and prosperous.
The site houses the usual clutch of bars and restaurants, as well as a hotel designed to look like a cruise liner, a spa and numerous quayside houses and apartments overlooking a marina filled with luxury yachts.
The most recently added accommodation block is the architecturally unremarkable Alexandra Wharf development, which caught the eye of Hunt – if not his administrative staff.
It contains 82 two- and three-bedroom apartments, featuring open-plan living rooms and kitchens, with prices advertised between £450,000 and £1m.
For anybody interested in investing alongside the cabinet minister, there remain 20 unsold, according to one person working on site, meaning Hunt has accounted for more than 10% of the units acquired so far.
Still, while the upmarket estate agency Savills has made sales, and some flats are said to have been occupied since the beginning of the year, the building feels deserted.
One new resident said that, despite the sales statistics, they had not seen much evidence that many of the flats were being used at all.
“I’ve not seen a lot of people. In two days I’ve seen one person,” he said. “You can tell [that there are not many residents] from the parking lot. There are only about four or five cars.”
A quick look underneath the building, in the private underground car park, seems to confirm this: residents are spoilt for choice about where to leave their vehicles.
Ringing the doorbells of the apartments does not get you much further, either. Nobody answers when you make a call on Hunt’s flats, while a neighbour who has bought one of the apartments for herself quickly tires of being questioned over the intercom and hangs up.
There is some support for Hunt among those people taking a bracing stroll along the marina (“we look forward to him moving in”, said one), but it is easier to find critics.
One Dutch visitor said the story of Hunt’s undisclosed apartments sounded familiar. “We had this issue in the Netherlands,” he said. “A minister had a house he forgot to tell anybody about. It was just a gift!”
“It is out of order,” added another passerby when asked about Hunt’s oversight. “He should declare everything. He isn’t exactly short of a few bob. He’s got £15m and he has not even declared a couple of flats. It’s ridiculous.”
