The King and the Royal Family will get a £45m windfall bonus after profits from the Crown Estate, the monarchy’s hereditary land and property holdings, more than doubled to a record £1.1bn last year.
The Crown Estate reported profits jumped by more than £658m during the year ending 31 March, up from £443m the previous year.
The surge in earnings was driven largely by payments made by energy companies to secure offshore space to build wind farms.
The Crown Estate controls the UK’s seabed, stretching up to 12 nautical miles out to sea from the coast and leases parts of it for commercial use. The King has no direct role in the operation of the estates which is run by an independent board.
Profits are paid directly to the Treasury, which apportions 12 per cent to the Royal Family as part of the Sovereign Grant to help support their official duties.
Royal aides said the increase will be used to complete the reservicing of Buckingham Palace by 2027. The National Audit Office revealed in an interim report that the Palace renovation has been well managed but structural damage and the discovery of asbestos, which led to cost increases, “could have been foreseen”.
The sovereign grant will be reviewed in 2026-27 to reassess the amount handed over to the palace and ensure it is an “appropriate level”.
As a result of the most recent round of offshore wind farm site auctions, the Crown Estate granted licences for six wind farms, three in the North Sea and three in the Irish Sea.
Dan Labbad, Crown Estate chief executive, said it was preparing to lease more sites for wind farms in the coming years, but that the fees would be less lucrative because of market changes. It was preparing to add another 20 to 30 gigawatts by 2030 to the 11 gigawatts it currently has operating, he said.
He warned that the high prices achieved in round 4 were unlikely to be sustained in future licensing rounds.
The Government has confirmed new borrowing powers for the company aimed at helping it to invest more. Currently it cannot use its cash reserves to invest because it must hold them against potential future losses.
Mr Labbad said the new borrowing powers would help the Crown Estate focus on “doing more, faster” in offshore wind, including “pre-development activities” for new plots of seabed that could eventually house wind turbines.
Borrowing is likely to amount to between 10 and 20 per cent of its £16bn property portfolio, and he said it would bolster profits in the “medium to long term”.
The Crown Estate also owns and operates properties totaling 180,000 acres across the UK, including valuable estate across Regent Street and St James’s in central London. The estate suffered from a post-pandemic fall-off in demand for office space which is only now returning.
King Charles, who has campaigned lifelong on environmental issues, has installed solar panels at Windsor Castle and plans to convert the royal family’s Bentley cars to run on biofuel, palace officials said.
The Royal Household’s official expenditure for 2023-24 was £89.1m, above the 86.3m allocated, forcing officials to raid reserves to fund the deficit. Overall expenditure fell by 17 per cent compared with the financial year 2022-2023, helped by a £10.8m fall in the cost of property maintenance.
Additional income to supplement the Sovereign Grant more than doubled to £19.8m helped by a rebound in ticket sales to visit royal palaces, which almost returned to pre-pandemic levels.
The royal family plan to take delivery of two new helicopters this financial year, the accounts show. The report justified the cost of the new helicopters, saying the existing ones are 15 years old, and it will help members of the royal family complete multiple engagements on a single day.
Overall, travel costs amounted to £4.2m, with the biggest overseas expense the king and queen’s state visit to Kenya which cost £167,000.