LIB DEM campaign guru Lord Chris Rennard has pocketed £41,000 expenses on a holiday home—against House of Lords rules.

For peers to claim for second homes, their main residence has to be outside London. But we can reveal that he spends almost all his time in a house just TWO MILES from Westminster.

Lord Rennard—said to earn £90,000 a year as his party’s Chief Executive—claimed the £41,678 cash over six years from 2001/02.

House of Lords rules state peers can only claim overnight subsistence allowance—their version of the MPs’ second home allowance— if they live most of the time outside Greater London.

But Lord Rennard’s neighbours in Eastbourne, Sussex, say he seldom visits the £230,000 flat he acquired in 2007 after selling a pad in Wokingham, Berks.

One said: "We only see him a few times a year. We call him the Holiday Home Man."

A former advisor to the Lib Dems revealed: "His colleagues know he lives in Vauxhall — and has to, to do his job."

The lord has had the home since 1998. Wife Ann lives there too. He has held lavish parties there for colleagues—some of them when the Lords were in recess.

The News of the World has also discovered the lord puts his London address on signed greetings cards, is involved in the local residents’ association and is a member of the local Lib Dem party.Last night Lord Rennard insisted: "At every stage I have confirmed the propriety of my claims with the House authorities."