Financially speaking, the royal family has rarely had it so good. After the coronation of King Charles in the summer, the Treasury announced a whopping 45% increase in the king’s public funding from 2025, taking it from £86.3m to just under £125m.
More than enough to be getting on with, one might think, as millions struggle to get by after years of economic stagnation and now an acute cost of living crisis. But as the Guardian’s latest investigation into the cost of the crown reveals, lavish state largesse is being supplemented by the exploitation of another income stream in a manner that is unseemly, disingenuous and in urgent need of reform.
As a result of an obscure hangover from feudal times, King Charles’s estate, which raises “private” income for the monarch, is being annually topped up by the assets of thousands of northerners who die without leaving a will, and with no known next of kin. Taken from citizens whose last known address lies within the medieval boundaries of the Lancashire county palatine, the moneys are boosting the balance sheets of the Duchy of Lancaster – the lucrative property empire inherited by Charles from Queen Elizabeth II on her death. In the last 10 years alone, more than £60m in such funds, known as bona vacantia, has been amassed.
Across the rest of Britain – except in the Duchy of Cornwall, where the Prince of Wales enjoys similar privileges to the king – bona vacantia money goes automatically to the Treasury. Perhaps mindful that treating the assets of deceased people from Preston or Oldham as a royal windfall might not be a good look, Duchy of Lancaster officials have long claimed that, after costs are deducted, the money goes to charity. But extensive research by the Guardian has established that a significant amount is being secretly used as “free money” to refurbish parts of the king’s vast property portfolio, pushing its rental value up. Funds have been diverted to spruce up townhouses, rural cottages, and even a Yorkshire barn used to facilitate pheasant and partridge shoots.
This is, to put it plainly, outrageous. Occupying a highly contentious grey area between the private and the public, the property portfolios of the duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall are liable neither for corporation nor capital gains tax. Worth a fortune, these commercial organisations have no need of an extra competitive edge provided by moneys from the unclaimed estates of former miners living in the Lake District, or retired nursery managers in Burnley. As the mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, has stated, a public consultation should swiftly be launched to explore alternative arrangements for these assets. The current sharp practice has to stop, replaced by a system that is transparent and open to critical scrutiny, and commands popular consent.
In apparent response to separate questions raised by the Guardian regarding its charities’ investment portfolios, the Duchy of Lancaster has announced a move to an ethical investing strategy by the end of the year. Good news. But reform of an unethical feudal anomaly should swiftly follow. In 1936, when times were also extremely hard, the former Labour leader, Clement Attlee, observed of the duchies: “It is extremely undesirable that the personal income of the sovereign should be in any way derived from kinds of property that are liable to come into controversy.” Quite.
