The Queen Mum, who was King George VI’s widow, had an excellent arrangement after her husband’s passing. She lived in luxury in Clarence House in London, she kept Royal Lodge as her Windsor home, and she had Castle of Mey in Scotland. When she passed in 2002, then-Prince Charles took over Clarence House, and he also sort-of inherited Castle of Mey. Meanwhile, Andrew convinced QEII to give him a lease on Royal Lodge. The lease was generous, to say the least: in exchange for paying £8.5 million to renovate, update & refurbish the lodge, Andrew would get a 75-year lease with extremely generous rental terms. At no point did anyone believe that Andrew was paying “market rate” for his lease, but people believed he was making an annual or monthly rental payment. He was not. Apparently, he hasn’t paid rent in two decades.
Prince Andrew has not paid rent on his grace-and-favour mansion on the Windsor Estate for two decades, The Times can reveal. The Times obtained a copy of the leasehold agreement for Royal Lodge, revealing the terms under which the prince lives on the 30-room estate. It states that, while the prince paid £1 million for the lease plus at least £7.5 million for refurbishments completed in 2005, he has paid “one peppercorn (if demanded)” in rent per year, since 2003.
He and his family are entitled to live in the property until 2078. Robert Jenrick became the first frontbench politician to call for the prince to leave the seven-bedroom mansion after the revelations. The shadow justice secretary said the public were “sick” of Andrew, who should “make his own way in life”.
The prince’s agreement also includes a clause stating that the Crown Estate, which manages Crown properties for the benefit of the taxpayer, would need to pay him around £558,000 if he gave up the lease. A “compensatory sum” of £185,865 a year would be due to Andrew until he reached year 25 of the agreement, in 2028. The Crown Estate disclosed an unredacted version of the lease to The Times, after demands from MPs and campaigners.
It was previously understood that Andrew had paid £1 million for the lease, and paid a “notional rent” of £260,000 per year from 2003, on top of committing to fund refurbishment of the property worth £7.5 million. The lease agreement has confirmed the notional rent would only be paid if he failed to do the works.
The £8.5 million initial outlay is equivalent to £113,000 per year, if he or his family remained in the property for 75 years, less than half the “notional” market rent.
The “one peppercorn” in rent goes some way to addressing the question as to how Prince Andrew and his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson have been able to afford to remain living in the mansion.
First of all, this not only shows that Andrew has been extremely protected and coddled by his mother and brother, it also shows that King Charles is a f–king liar. For more than two years, Charles has publicly and loudly claimed that he’s doing everything he can to get Andrew out of Royal Lodge. Turns out, there was a reason to evict Andrew this whole time: he was delinquent on his payments to the Crown Estates. While Andrew’s lease might be “ironclad,” a lease agreement goes both ways – you don’t get the protection of an ironclad lease if you can’t adhere to the terms of the lease.
This is also particularly disgusting when you compare this situation to what happened to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. The ramshackle Frogmore Cottage was renovated for the Sussexes, much of which they paid for upfront, in exchange for a two-year lease which rolled over. One of the clauses of the Sussexit was that Harry and Meghan had to “pay back” the cost of the renovations, which they did. Charles still evicted them from Frogmore in 2023, even though they were paying rent and paying to have the home maintained. Frogmore still sits empty, two and a half years after the Sussexes’ eviction.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid, Instar.
