Kirstie Allsopp has urged Labour Chancellor Rachel Reeves to deliver a change on a huge tax which will soon impact millions of Britons. It comes as home buyers are scrambling to complete purchases by the end of the month or face paying thousands of pounds extra in stamp duty. First-time buyers in particular could be hit when stamp duty thresholds in England and Northern Ireland change on April. The Location, Location, Location presenter, 53, addressed a young family who are unable to move due to the eye-watering amount they would have to pay in stamp duty.

Taking to X on Monday evening she tweeted: "Working with an electrician & a nurse with 2 small kids. They bought a house for £272,000, it’s now worth £360,000 because they did work to it. They could push to £575,000 on their next home, but @RachelReevesMP requires £18,750 in Stamp Duty!!! This tax stops people moving." At the moment, buyers of homes worth less than than £250,000 do not pay stamp duty land tax, but this will revert to £125,000 from 1 April. For most first-time buyers the threshold is currently £425,000, but this will fall back to £300,000 in April.

The increases to the thresholds had been introduced during the September 2022 mini-Budget.

Social media users reacted to the property expert's remarks which sparked a divide as one person argued: "Stamp Duty was in existence BEFORE Rachel Reeves became Chancellor."

Kirstie replied: "Indeed it was, George Osborne did a lot of the damage, but Rachel Reeves is currently chancellor, so at the moment it’s down to her."

Another commented: "No. People treating houses like investments/nest eggs stops people moving. If you treat it like a home and not a business then we can all live somewhere nice."

The Channel 4 host said: "So wanting another bedroom for your second child, and perhaps a second bathroom isn’t acceptable in your world?"

Kirstie went on to share a number of tweets where she had pushed the Conservative government to remove stamp duty including a message to former Tory Chancellor Geroge Osborne in 2017 to scrap the "pointless tax" to more recently Rishi Sunak three years ago.

She tweeted: "For all those people who think I’m just having a go at poor Rachel and never mentioned stamp duty before OR just don’t like taxes," before adding: "And here’s another one! I have always believed that high stamp duty was a pointless tax that lost the government money and added to the already extortionate cost of moving house, which when your family grows, when you divorce, when someone dies etc you have to do."

The Spring Statement is not designed to act as another Budget and is not expected to bring in any significant changes.

However, there is speculation that Chancellor Reeves might leverage this occasion to unveil new measures to help balance public finances and reinvigorate the economy.