What the Royal Family spent your cash on last year – everything we know
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What's happened? Newly released royal accounts reveal exactly how the Royal Family has spent taxpayers' money over the year.
The annual sovereign grant report, released on Thursday, covers the financial year of 2022/23, revealing that the Royal Family cost the British taxpayer £86.3 million.
Public money is given to the monarch every year by the government under the sovereign grant – a taxpayer-funded settlement set up in 2011.
Its most recent total remains unchanged from the previous year, and amounts to £1.29 per person in the UK, with the royal household's total net expenditure hitting £102.4m – a 17% increase on the previous year.
That exceeds both the sovereign grant and additional income earned, for example, through the King's private estate of land, the Duchy of Lancaster.
In addition to inflationary pressures, the monarchy has had a number of expensive spending commitments lately including the renovation of Buckingham Palace, the Platinum Jubilee, Queen Elizabeth II's funeral and preparations for King Charles III's coronation.
Here, Yahoo News has put together the key findings of the sovereign grant report.
The King loses £500m on London property
The Crown Estate – a collection of land and holdings belonging to the monarch (not to be confused with his private estate) – has lost half a billion pounds in its London property portfolio.
Properties in the capital held by King Charles' public estate fell by 6.5% to £7.2bn in the past year alone, as the cost of living crisis prompted shoppers to stay at home and triggered a slump in the value of retail space.
Now, nearly one-fifth of the Crown Estate's properties are either vacant or unoccupied – up from just over a tenth in the previous year.
However, despite challenging conditions in London, the overall value of the estate rose by 1.3% to £15.8bn, driven largely by its marine portfolio as it profited off its investments in offshore wind seabed licensing.
The estate also saw an increase in value in its rural investments, effectively cancelling out its losses in office and retail space.
The King loses £500m on London estate as retail property prices crash (Telegraph, 13 mins)
Royal visits drop
Royal travel costs have fallen by £600,000 to £3.9m, which in part could be explained by a drop in overseas trips.
A Buckingham Palace spokesperson said there had been a 43% decrease in business travel emissions for this very same reason.
The most expensive trip of the financial year was Charles and Camilla's visit to Rwanda for the Heads of Commonwealth meeting in June 2022 – costing a total of £186,571.
Second to that is the King and Queen’s first state visit, which took them to Hamburg and Berlin in Germany by charter costing £146,219.
The Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh’s official Platinum Jubilee trip to St Lucia, St Vincent and Antigua and a separate staff planning visit, cost £85,069.
Despite an overall reduction in travel, a total of 179 helicopter trips were taken during 2022/23 – topping £1m. However, details of the individual flights are not listed, as they each fall below a £17,000 cost threshold.
Britain’s royal finances boosted by record wind profits
The King's Crown Estate posted a record profit last year boosted by income from offshore wind leases.
Net revenue profit for the entire estate reached £442.6m - up by £129.9m on the previous year, accounts show.
In January, Charles said he wanted some of the profits from the first major auction of offshore wind farm leases in more than a decade, to go to the "wider public good", rather than back to the royal household.
However the King did not say exactly which causes he wanted it to go towards or how much money should be spared.
Britain’s royal finances boosted by record wind profits (Reuters, 2 mins)
Harry and Meghan evicted
After taking the decision to quit as senior royals and live independently as a family in California, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have permanently left their home of Frogmore Cottage.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's decision to leave sparked a debate over their use of the home in Windsor, with a renovation of the property costing the taxpayer £2.4m.
However, at a briefing, Sir Michael Stevens, keeper of the privy purse, said: "The duke and duchess have paid for the expenditure incurred by the sovereign grant in relation to the renovation of Frogmore Cottage, thus leaving the Crown with a greatly enhanced asset.”
He confirmed that the couple had fully moved out of the Grade-II listed property, which was a gift to the couple from Harry’s grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II.
Harry and Meghan have vacated Frogmore Cottage, palace confirms (Evening Standard, 2 mins)
Charles turns the heating down
Even the Royal Family is feeling the impact of the energy crisis it seems, with the sovereign grant report revealing that the King has been forced to turn down the thermostat.
It says a “concerted effort” has been made to reduce the temperature in occupied rooms at Royal properties to 19C and to “educate staff” to turn down the thermostat to 16C in vacant rooms.
As well as a means of saving money, turning down heating in royal properties is also part of the King's ambition to achieve net-zero emissions throughout the institution.
King turns radiators down as soaring energy bills bite (Telegraph, 2 mins)
Palace misses diversity target - again
Buckingham Palace has missed its diversity target for staff once again, the sovereign grant report has revealed.
The number of staffers from ethnic minority backgrounds remains at 9.7% – same as last year – falling short of the Royal Family's goal of 10% for the end of 2022. It hopes to reach a higher target of 14% by 2025.
The Prince and Princess of Wales’s household, however, has 16.3% of staff from an ethnic minority background, with the Kensington Palace figure up from 13.6% last year.
To put these targets into perspective, around 18% of people belong to a black, Asian, mixed or other ethnic group, according to the 2021 census data.
Prince William receives £6m salary – but could get more than £20m next year
Prince William's annual income from the Duchy of Cornwall – his private property portfolio, which was passed to him when his father became King – was nearly £6m in 2022/23.
The duchy generated record profits of over £24m in the year – up £1.02m from the previous year and a rise of about 4.5%, accounts show.
Usually he would be entitled to the full £24m, but matters were complicated by him becoming heir to the throne halfway throughout the financial year.
The duchy team had asked to keep a portion of the surplus to help with the day-to-day running of the estate due to the “one-off associated with the change in Dukes of Cornwall”.
As a result, the Duchy kept £6.873m, leaving William with an income of £5.9m, the latest accounts show.
Prince William receives £6m salary – but could get more than £20m next year (Independent, 4 mins)
