King Charles is paying the rent on grace-and-favour apartments for Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie in London palaces while their father, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, has quietly pocketed income from subletting cottages on his Windsor estate, according to a report published in London on Friday. The National Audit Office (NAO) said the king was meeting the York sisters' reduced rents from his private Duchy of Lancaster income, despite both women living elsewhere and neither being working royals.
The NAO has spent six months examining how royal residences are allocated and paid for after MPs ordered an inquiry into The Crown Estate and the furore over Andrew's long-standing deal at Royal Lodge in Windsor Great Park. The former Duke of York has lived there for more than 30 years on what is described as a peppercorn rent, a symbolically low payment that has increasingly jarred with his disgraced public standing.
