IT WAS

simple enough to install a £25,000 shepherd’s hut in the garden, but other improvements to David and Samantha Cameron’s £1.5 million Cotswold retreat are proving more protracted than expected. Indeed, the couple’s hopes of returning for Christmas have, I hear, been dashed. Instead, they will remain in a nearby property which they rented a while ago as a stop-gap. ‘They’ve extended the rental agreement through to Easter because their works have taken longer than they’d hoped,’ explains a local. A spokesman at Dave’s office declines to comment on ‘a private matter’. The £200,000 building work includes development of a 90ft suite of outbuildings and enlargement of the kitchen, with new oak doors that will ‘weather to a silver grey’.