From a bumper income on the way for the royal family, to the King’s new solar panels and helicopters, and Prince William keeping his Duchy of Cornwall team on their toes on WhatsApp, it’s all come out in the annual royal finance report.
The annual accounts have shown the monarchy is set to receive a boost of more than £45m in its funding, with a 53% jump in its official annual income in 2025/2026 to £132m.
Rising profits from the Crown Estate to £1.1bn in 2023/2024 mean the taxpayer-funded Sovereign Grant, which supports the official duties of the royal family, will stay at £86.3m in 2024/2025 but then jump to £132m the following year.
It’s after Crown Estate financial figures showed profits were up this year – the Sovereign Grant is always based on funds two years in arrears.
It was announced last year that the funding of the monarchy would be switched from 25% to 12% of the Crown Estate’s net profits because of the rising income expected from the estate’s new offshore wind deals. The King asked for the wind farm profits to be used for the wider public good.
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Buckingham Palace’s annual accounts – covering the first full financial year of the King’s reign – were published on Wednesday after being delayed for a month because of the general election.
Calling for greater transparency, Graham Smith, from the anti-monarchy campaign group Republic, said: “We do not owe the royals a living, we do not owe them palatial homes, private helicopter travel or lives of leisure and luxury.
“The only reason the price tag for the royals is so high is because the monarchy is corrupt. They abuse the taxpayer’s trust day in, day out, taking our money to spend on their own private lifestyles.”
King Charles III arrives at an event in May 2024 in a helicopter. Pic: AP Photo/Kin Cheung
Travel has again attracted attention with the Sovereign Grant report also revealing the royal household will take delivery of two new helicopters in 2024-25 to replace the existing 15-year-old ones.
Despite the King’s commitment to protecting the environment, and a royal source in 2022 saying Prince Charles was “pretty allergic” to travelling by helicopter, the two new AgustaWestland AW139s, which will partly use sustainable aviation fuel, were described as a “key component” in enabling the King and the royal family to carry out their engagements in remote areas of the UK.
The King’s state Bentleys are also being converted to run on bio-fuel within the next year, with a view to switching to a fleet of official electric cars in the future. Solar panels have been introduced to Windsor Castle for the first time. And gas lanterns at Buckingham Palace, which were switched off during the recent energy crisis as a cost-saving measure, are being repurposed with specially designed electrical fittings. Despite that work however greenhouse gas emissions have gone up slightly, due to an increase in travel and electricity usage.
Official travel costs went up slightly by £300,000 from £3.9m to £4.2m. The most expensive travel was the King and Queen’s visit to Kenya by charter flight in October, along with the related separate staff planning visit by scheduled flights, which came to a total of £166,557.
A three-day state visit to France, with trips to Paris and Bordeaux, by Charles and Camilla by charter flight in September cost £117,942.
The King and Queen on Coronation day on the Buckingham Palace balcony. Pic: PA
The rundown of royal finances – from 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024 – covers a tumultuous 12 months, with the King and the Princess of Wales’s double cancer diagnosis. But also the celebrations of the Coronation.
It was revealed that £600,000 from the Sovereign Grant was spent on the coronation and events surrounding it last year, with the total cost to the Sovereign Grant overall coming to £800,000.
The figure covered internal costs such as staffing, palace receptions, plus any furnishings or costumes which will be reused later on, including the readjusting of the Imperial State Crown and the King and Queen’s coronation robes.
Meanwhile, separate financial reports released by Kensington Palace and the Duchy of Cornwall, covering Prince William‘s first full financial year as Duke of Cornwall, showed that he received an annual private income of more than £23m last year.
William, as heir to the throne, is entitled to the surplus profits of the Duchy of Cornwall estate, to fund the official, charitable and private lives of his family.
Prince William delivers a speech at the Breakthrough Energy Summit in June. Pic: Chris Jackson/Pool Photo via AP
The King, as the previous Prince of Wales and Duke of Cornwall, disclosed the voluntary tax he paid in his annual Clarence House review, but Kensington Palace has decided not to share the information.
During a briefing it was also highlighted how the prince often uses WhatsApp to keep the team on their toes, as he aims to focus the work of the Duchy of Cornwall onto his key causes, the environment, homelessness and mental health.
Alastair Martin, the Duchy of Cornwall’s secretary and keeper of records, said: “Sustainability is a passion that they both share but there are some differences.
“His royal highness the 24th duke would telephone me. His royal highness the 25th Duke, will WhatsApp me.”
He added: “The day after her late majesty died, I rang Prince William to say ‘Welcome to your Duchy, Sir’.
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“I obviously knew him, I’d been working with him for the previous eight years or 10 years, to really explain to him what his future was during the time he was heir to the throne.
“And he said, ‘I’m going to give you my mobile telephone number – if you want me, just get me, just message me’.
“And that’s how he works and he is very involved. There will be weekends when my WhatsApp messages will be in double figures and I will be very responsive.
“If something has gone well or badly, I will want to tell my boss and he’ll be straight back.”
Ian Patrick, Prince William’s private secretary also unusually shared information about the personal charitable donations William and Kate have made throughout the year.
“Their royal highnesses regularly undertake private philanthropy and ordinarily we wouldn’t share this, but I wanted to give you a window into that today.”
Mr Patrick said the couple had donated to the London Air Ambulance, James’s Place, the Shout mental help text crisis service, and disaster relief causes after the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria, the war in Ukraine and the hurricane in the Caribbean.
He also hinted at a new project coming later this year which William and Kate have personally funded to help improve mental health outcomes in rural communities.