Last week, we learned some interesting news about the Wales family’s new home, Forest Lodge. Forest Lodge is located on the Windsor estate, and it’s part of the Crown Estates. We learned that Prince William and Kate actually are paying “market rate” for their 20-year lease, although it sounds like the independent valuers were assessing the property as-is, well before William and Kate decided they needed to evict local tenants, grab 150 acres of public parkland and sow chaos for Christmas tree shoppers across Windsor Great Park. All said, this Forest Lodge move has not gone smoothly from a PR perspective, despite some pitiful PR about how they *deserve* a luxury manor house because their previous home was cursed! Well, now Republic’s Graham Smith is chiming in about William and Kate’s “abuse of power.”
Prince William and Princess Kate’s new home has pushed Windsor residents into a one-mile detour to buy their Christmas trees in the latest example of tensions caused by the couple relocating. The Prince and Princess of Wales only moved into their former home Adelaide Cottage in 2022 and already they have moved on to Forest Lodge, a bigger house, also in Windsor. However, the shift appears to have caused some disruption to local residents due to the security buffer zone around the home, which most recently has forced Christmas tree shoppers onto an awkward one mile detour, the Daily Mail reported.
Any suggestion ordinary people’s lives are being turned upside down so William and Kate can move to a bigger house in the same area, in Windsor, risks framing the couple as part an out of touch elite.
Graham Smith, chief executive of anti-Monarchy campaign group Republic, told Newsweek: “The Christmas trees issue might seem silly, but the point is this is all public property and William should not have been able to close those roads and close access to that land. It’s not his to do what he wants with.”
The British Government passed legislation via an amendment to the Serious Organized Crime and Police Act to make trespassing in a buffer zone around Forest Lodge a criminal offense under U.K. law. Trespass is usually a civil offense only. The act said this was needed “in anticipation of the relocation of a protected principal.” This is understood to mean William, as well as Kate and their three children Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis.
This exclusion zone covers around 150 acres around the mansion, in Windsor Great Park, and the legislation states that it sits on Crown Estate land. The Crown Estate is not run directly by the Monarchy and is widely regarded as a public asset. It’s profits go to the British Government which then gives 25 percent to the palace as its public funding.
Smith pointed to other examples of the security zone causing problems, including over the summer when The Mail on Sunday reported two families had been forced to move out of their homes because they were considered too close to Forest Lodge. They were reportedly found alternative accommodation.
Graham Smith, chief executive of Republic, told Newsweek: “He’s also forced two people, two families to move out of their homes. They were relocated to other places on the park but this is just another example of William just basically sticking two fingers up to local people and then just grabbing land that isn’t his just so that he can move from one house to another. So it’s just an abuse of power and privilege for me.”
Graham Smith is right – it’s abuse of power, it’s privileged and, even more than that, it’s high-handed and soooo unnecessary. There was absolutely no reason for Will and Kate to suddenly decide that Forest Lodge will be their latest forever home and, oh yeah, we need to tack on another 150 acres and evict a bunch of people and ruin locals’ tree-buying experiences to boot. William and Kate are acting like all of Windsor is their playground to do whatever they want. There were already plenty of open and available properties with built-in security zones. So why Forest Lodge? I really wonder.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.
