The Royal Family’s money: The monarchy’s income and spending explained in charts

Spending by the Royal Family has risen by £5m in a year, new accounts show.

Campaign group Republic said King Charles seemed “completely oblivious to his need to reduce costs” amid the cost of living crisis.

But palace officials said the the past 12 months had seen the Platinum Jubilee as well as the death of Queen Elizabeth II, describing it as a “a year of grief, change and celebration, the like of which our nation has not witnessed for seven decades”.

Royal accounts show Charles has begun his reign with the monarchy's spending rising for the second year running. The figure for net expenditure increased by £5.1 million, or 5%, to £107.5 million for 2022/23, which royal aides said was due to the change of monarchs, inflation and the continued costs of Buckingham Palace’s renovation programme, a 10-year project to update the electrical cabling, plumbing and heating.

The Sovereign Grant - the Royal Household's funding from the taxpayer - remained unchanged at £86.3 million in 2022/23, leaving a £21.2 million overspend which had to be paid for through drawing on reserves.

A core element of £51.8 million funds the King’s official duties and his household – equivalent to 77p per person in the UK – and an additional £34.5 million pays for ongoing renovations at Buckingham Palace.

Payroll costs saw one of the biggest annual increases of any expenditure during 2022/23, rising £3.4 million to £27.1 million, with staff given a pay rise of about 5%-6%, and the workforce increased to pre-pandemic levels as royal activities picked up after the lockdowns.

Sir Michael Stevens, Keeper of the Privy Purse, said the past 12 months had been “a year of grief, change and celebration, the like of which our nation has not witnessed for seven decades”.

He added: “These past 12 months have taken us from the Platinum Jubilee in the summer of last year, to the sadness of the death of Queen Elizabeth and the accession of our new sovereign in the autumn, via an incoming and outgoing state visit and many months of work in preparation for the coronation of their majesties King Charles and Queen Camilla in the spring of this year.”

There was a mixed picture for spending in other areas, with housekeeping and hospitality up from £1.3 million to £2.4 million, and property maintenance falling £6.1 million to £57.8 million.

The Sovereign Grant document reported on the royal household’s sustainability efforts, highlighting a number of initiatives including moves to turn down the heating in Buckingham Palace and other Royal homes. 

A palace spokesman said “His majesty has obviously supported the strategic direction of the royal households in its attempts to achieve net zero.”

He added: “In the short term though, it is all about reducing our emissions where we can control our emissions and in adjusting room temperatures, whether that’s during the working week or whether that’s a limiting of the effect of heating on weekends. Or whether it’s turning off the gas lamps where it’s safe to do so, as a precursor to changing them over to electric operation, or indeed if it’s the case of turning the heating off on the swimming pool – these are all areas which are about the steps that we can take to reduce our emissions.”

The report showed £1.6 million was spent on the Queen’s funeral and events around the ceremony, which included paying for engagements at Buckingham Palace and staff costs and travel, said a palace spokesman. A further £700,000 was spent by the royal household on the Platinum Jubilee.

NationalWorld has already revealed how the total cost to the taxpayer of Elizabeth II's funeral was £162 million, with at least £75 million spent by emergency services and the queue for her lying-in-state costing Parliament at least £1.3 million.

The Queen’s former private secretary Lord Young, who stayed on as joint principal private secretary to the King to help the transition from one monarch to another, received a compensation payment of £145,000-£150,000, on top of his £200,000 – £205,000 salary, after stepping down in May.

The King and Queen plan to use the late Queen’s private apartments at Buckingham Palace when refurbishment works are completed there, a Palace official said.

“It is currently the intention that their majesties will occupy the private apartments of her late majesty at the end of the reservicing programme. And at this point, I’m not in a position to speculate on the future of Clarence House,” he said.

Work is still to be undertaken on the Palace’s North Wing, and with a timescale of 18 months needed to “decant” this part of the palace, with 70,000 objects having to be moved to a temporary home.

This will be followed by two years of construction on the North Wing, with the full building work project expected to be finished in 2027.

Graham Smith, chief executive of Republic, which campaigns for an elected head of state, criticised the rise in royal expenditure as the country experienced a cost-of-living crisis.

He said: “Charles has suggested he’s concerned about, and aware of, the cost-of-living crisis and yet he seems completely oblivious to his need to reduce costs and they continue to go up and up, whilst public services are being squeezed.

“Really they should be slashing the budget by tens of millions of pounds, not increasing it by £5 million.”

From cricket to quarries: the different income streams of the royals

As monarch, Charles possesses the Crown Estate - a huge portfolio of land and property across England, Wales and Northern Ireland - for the duration of his reign. The Estate owns the whole of London’s Regent Street, a host of regional shopping parks, coastal areas and tenant farms, among other assets.

The monarch gives revenue from the Crown Estate to the Treasury in return for getting a quarter of it back in the form of the Sovereign Grant, which funds the duties of working royals. This grant was worth £86.3 million in 2022/23.

But this is not the King’s only income stream. He has also inherited the Duchy of Lancaster, a portfolio worth £653 million which includes more than a dozen castles and historic properties, quarries and mines and 18,481 hectares of rural land and property. It generated £24 million in 2021/22.

Similarly, the Duchy of Cornwall covers the cost of William’s public and private lives. The Duchy is valued at more than £1 billion and is one of the largest and oldest landed estates in Britain.

It was created in 1337 by Edward III to support his son and heir Prince Edward, known as the Black Prince, and all his subsequent heirs. It extends across 23 counties in England and Wales and includes the Oval cricket ground and 67,000 acres of Dartmoor.

Royal trips and travel costs

Royal travel costs have fallen by £600,000 to £3.9 million, but the expenditure on helicopter flights has topped £1 million, the Sovereign Grant accounts show. A large number of trips were taken by helicopter, 179 journeys in total, during 2022/23, but their details are not listed as they fall below a £17,000 cost threshold.

The most expensive was Charles and Camilla’s charter flight to Rwanda in June last year to attend a Commonwealth leaders’ summit, costing £186,571. The sum also paid for the King to travel to Aberdeen, from Brize Norton, after the trip and for a staff planning visit.

During a briefing for last year accounts a source said Charles is “pretty allergic” to travelling by helicopter and will always “raise an eyebrow” and object when the mode of transport is suggested.

The drop in travel costs for 2022/23 may in part be explained by a fall in the number of overseas trips.

A Buckingham Palace spokesman said: “We also saw a 43% decrease in business travel emissions, largely due to the reduced number of overseas visits requested by Government this year.”

Other major overseas trips included 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.

The Prince and Princess of Wales’ scheduled airline flight, and a staff planning visit, to Boston in the US to attend the awards ceremony for William’s Earthshot Prize cost £48,034.

There were a number of residence to residence chartered flights made by Charles, one taken from Aberdeen to RAF Northolt last October cost £25,687, while another with Camilla, travelling from RAF Northolt to Aberdeen in September, cost £23,164. The King used the royal train in January travelling from Ayr to Manchester to carry out a string of engagements at both locations over two days at a cost of £31,571.

Asked about the future of the royal train a Buckingham Palace spokesman said: “Once we determine what the future usage will be we’d be in a position to consider plans for a time table for decommissioning.”

Prince William’s £6 million income 

Separate financial information relating to the Prince of Wales was also released, showing William received a private income of nearly £6 million from the Duchy of Cornwall, but was criticised for not publishing an annual report in his first year as heir to the throne.

William inherited the Duchy landed estate after the death of his grandmother the late Queen and the accession of his father the King, and is now entitled to its surplus profits every year.

Republic called on William to report his income and expenditure in full, and for his Duchy income to be given to local communities across the country instead.

The Duchy generated record profits of £24.048 million in 2022-23 – up £1.02 million from £23.024 million the year before, a jump of about 4.5%, the estate’s own accounts showed.

Usually William would be entitled to the full £24 million as his private income, but his finances have been complicated after he became heir to the throne half way through the financial year.

The King, as the former Prince of Wales, was entitled to £11.275 million of the surplus before his accession, while William, who spent about six months of the last financial year as the Duke of Cornwall and Prince of Wales, to £12.773 million, Kensington Palace said.

But the Palace said as a “one-off associated with the change in Dukes of Cornwall”, the Duchy team asked to retain a proportion of the surplus for “working capital purposes” – the day-to-day running of the estate – this year.

The Duchy kept £6.873m, leaving William with an income of £5.9 million. The annual figures were published on Thursday, in the same week William launched Homewards, his five-year drive to eradicate homelessness in six locations around the UK.

As the Prince of Wales, Charles released a separate annual Clarence House review each year, detailing his broad income and expenditure of the Duchy money.

But Kensington Palace said that the past year had been a transitional one following the death of the late Queen and as such they would not be releasing a report this year – William’s first as the heir apparent.

“Their royal highnesses have been working through with their Duchy and household team their plans and priorities for the Duchy and the household in the years to come, and how these support their work and charitable priorities, such as The Royal Foundation and its programmes,” a Kensington Palace spokesman said.

“And it’s why the household is not publishing a partial annual report.”

Mr Smith said: “William has some explaining to do because a change of monarch and heir is no excuse to row back on what little transparency there is.”

He added: “There is absolutely no reason why William’s household cannot provide a full set of accounts for this financial year. As the recipient of public funds from the state-owned Duchy he should be reporting his income and expenditure. As Duchy profits appear to be growing to a record £24m it’s time we demanded the return of the Duchies (of Cornwall and Lancaster) to the people and for revenue to be spent on local communities.”

William, in the Duchy’s own detailed financial accounts, paid tribute to his father for leaving an “indelible mark” on the Duchy and being passionate about driving forward change.

He described wanting to make a difference in his new role himself.

“I am committed to the cause of tackling climate change and I am proud of the estate’s efforts to contribute to this challenge,” William said.

“If we can also help respond to social challenges such as mental health and homelessness, I will feel my term as duke has been worthwhile,” he said.

He added: “I recognise that I have taken the helm at a challenging time for many Duchy tenants, businesses and communities.”

Next year William is expected to receive the full £24 million Duchy profit. But Alastair Martin, the Duchy’s secretary and keeper of the records, suggested the estate may not reach those record figures again. He put the boost from £23 million to £24 million down to some additional one-off income.

“This will not continue and the surplus for 2023/24 will not be at this level,” he said. “Income will return to ongoing levels, there will be significant cost increases and a full repairs programme to finance.”

William will also have received money from his father for the funding of his official duties and his private life when he was Duke of Cambridge for the first six months of the 2022/23 financial year.

Charles’s bill for the activities of William, Kate and their family, and other costs including capital expenditure and transfer to reserve, was £4.38 million in 2021/22. But the figure has not been disclosed this year, nor has any tax bill for Charles relating to the Duchy.

William’s tax bill for any Duchy money would be due in January 2024. He pays income tax on the surplus after official costs have been deducted.