This quote from the Sunday Times today:   > Previously anyone who built a “granny flat” with its own front door had to pay full council tax on it, unless the occupant was a dependant. Now ministers plan to offer a 50% discount if the occupant is a relative. The move acknowledges the trend for three generations to live in the same home. Eric Pickles, the communities and local government secretary, said: “Removing the family tax penalty on annexes and home improvements will help provide more affordable housing and strengthen the bonds that tie society together.”   http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/uk_news/Society/article1305034.ece       Ignoring modern-day politics (please).     As some of you will know, I read a lot of seventeenth-century wills. In the area that I research, most probate inventories have survived. These make clear that the very elderly in rural districts, even if they had handed over control and ownership of their farms to their children, were still identified as having possessions (a bed, a chair, maybe books, maybe a few sheep). Sometimes they were clearly in a separate cottage on the steading. Not only that, but farmsteads were often split (either legally or practically) between siblings, so farmsteads could have elderly uncles as well as elderly fathers. Widows had right to a third or half of the farm so that created further living splits.   That's really just a comment. I'd be interested if people could follow through from that to the modern trend that is emerging.     Chris