Last week, a parliamentary committee announced that they would examine the Crown Estate, and the self-dealing leases the Windsors give themselves. While Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was dramatically “unroyaled” to stop the government from looking too closely at royal finances, it didn’t work when it came to royal real estate. Andrew’s Royal Lodge peppercorn rent has now opened up Pandora’s Box, as everyone is now learning how little the royals pay for ALL of their leases. This Telegraph story broke down some of the other royal lease issues which will become a much bigger deal next year:
Ingrid Seward on the lack of reporting around royal real estate: “The Crown Estate contains a huge number of properties but most of us haven’t been aware of what exactly is out there, and until now, few of us have cared to ask,” says Ingrid Seward, royal biographer and editor-in-chief of Majesty magazine. “Now, that has changed, which means Andrew has opened the door to a lot of problems for his family and the way they live.” This week, Parliament’s public accounts committee announced plans to investigate the terms under which members of the family occupy properties owned by the Crown Estate, with an inquiry set for early 2026.
Bagshot Park: Questions are already being asked about the likes of Bagshot Park – the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh’s resplendent 120-room Surrey mansion that comes with 50 acres of land. The couple moved there in 1999 (initially paying £5,000 a year in rent), and renewed their lease with a one-off payment of £5m to the Crown Estate in 2007. Their agreement states they are entitled to stay there for 150 years. If Edward and Sophie were to leave the house tomorrow, they would have paid around £250,000 a year to live there. However, if they stay put for another 20 years, that would go down to £125,000 a year, or little over £10,000 a month. This is well below market value, and with each passing year, their “rent” becomes cheaper. Considering there was once a bid to turn the mansion into a conference centre (properties that size can make a profit of around £12m a year for commercial ventures), these sums represent a significant loss for the public purse.
But Edward and Sophie receive no salary for the work they do. “All they get is travel that they may not even want and some money for clothes when they do go abroad – and then this hugely reduced rental,” says Seward. “The trouble with Royal Lodge was that Andrew was doing bugger all so it felt wrong, but in my opinion Sophie and Edward add a lot to this country and don’t deserve the criticism.”
Princess Alexandra’s cheap lease on Thatched House Lodge in Richmond Park: Her rent is just £225 a month, which works out at approximately £56 a week. On the one hand, this is absurdly cheap for the capital, but on the other, Princess Alexandra is an 88-year-old woman who dedicated much of her life to attending charity events and openings on behalf of the Royal family. “To be honest, I think the criticism is a little unfair,” says royal correspondent and biographer Robert Jobson. “She did a lot of work for the family and is now old and frail and not very well, and you can’t go in and suddenly put the rent up. But when she dies, that would be the time to put it on at market prices. And that should be true even if another member of the family moves in: they need to pay a commercial rate.”
What is William paying for rent for his Kensington Palace apartment? Still, even William – who is a stickler for doing things fairly – is unlikely to pay the going rate for his four-storey, 20-room apartment in Kensington Palace. Alongside him in the grounds of the west London property are the Gloucesters, who live in the Old Stables, and the Duke of Kent, who is based in Wren House, and Prince and Princess Michael of Kent, who have an apartment of their own. Princess Eugenie, meanwhile, lives between Ivy Cottage – which also sits within the grounds of Kensington Palace – and Portugal, with her husband and two sons.
St. James’s Palace is full of royals too: And then there is St James’s Palace which houses Princess Anne (when she is not at her main private estate in Gloucestershire), Princess Beatrice, and Princess Alexandra in large apartments near Pall Mall – with Beatrice’s flat rumoured to be so large that it even contains a ballroom. (One palace insider notes that Andrew was allegedly paying the London rent on behalf of his daughters for some time, but that this is likely to have stopped now.)
The Windsors can’t rent these properties out to just anyone: Anyone living in these palaces rubs shoulders with senior royals on a daily basis, which makes renting them out to members of the public extremely difficult. “If they weren’t given to family, they would be empty,” says Seward. “In fact, putting them on the market would be a burden to the taxpayer because of all the police who would have to be around, keeping tabs on everyone.” Still, the system could do with reform or, at the least, some transparency. “I’m not questioning their right to have somewhere to live in London,” says Jobson, “but we do have a right to know what they are paying, particularly in the case of people like Eugenie and Beatrice who are not working royals. There are a lot of young people living in London who would dream of renting a single room within a few miles of where they [the princesses] live, let alone a huge apartment.”
William will have to reform the system: “When Charles first became King, he wanted to reevaluate how it was all working but I think the cancer stopped him in his tracks,” says Jobson. “He was hoping to limit the number of people having access to Crown Estate properties – or stopping situations where, say, an adult son or daughter was living in an apartment allocated to their parents. But I suspect all that will be left to William.”
British malaise: “There is a malaise in Britain at the moment,” says Seward. “People feel like it is too expensive to live in this country and at times like that they tend to turn on the monarchy, but what they don’t realise is how hard some of them work and how joyless much of their lives really are. The least we can do is let them live somewhere lovely.”
LMAO: “…but what they don’t realise is how hard some of them work and how joyless much of their lives really are. The least we can do is let them live somewhere lovely.” Is that really how the average British person feels? “Royal life is so joyless and gloomy, they deserve a free castle?” Seward is really telling on herself and her whole profession here: “most of us haven’t been aware of what exactly is out there, and until now, few of us have cared to ask…” You don’t say! You mean royal reporters are too busy jockeying for access and acting as stenographers to power, as opposed to actually being JOURNALISTS and investigating the royal power structure?
But this piece is full of interesting details too – I had no idea that Beatrice’s SJP flat is so large, it has a ballroom?? No one knows what William and Kate pay for their KP apartment? And Sophie and Edward don’t get paid so they deserve a huge mansion? Bonkers.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.
