How much does the Royal Family cost?

It’s a relevant question but one to which there is no straight answer.

Today, the pressure group Republic – which, as its name suggests, wants to replace monarchy with a republic – claims the real cost of running the Royal Household each year is much higher than official figures show.

A new report from Republic has estimated the annual cost for the Royal Family to be around half a billion pounds.

And it suggests that King Charles should be paid a salary slightly higher than the Prime Minister’s at £189,000 per year.

It also says the monarch should be limited to just two homes, one in London and one in the countryside. Currently King Charles has use of Buckingham Palace, Clarence House, Highgrove, Sandringham and Balmoral among others.

The group’s £510 million estimate is much higher than the £86.3 million listed in the most recent Sovereign Grant report.

The cost of the Royal Family to taxpayers is £510m a year anti-monarchy campaigners claim. / Credit: AP

Graham Smith, from Republic said: “The half a billion pound cost of the royals represents a scandalous abuse of public money. It is the result of royal corruption and secrecy, a family that believes it can spend public money with impunity.”

The Sovereign Grant pays for the costs of running the Royal Family – like travel, staff and entertaining – as well as the big ten-year rebuild of Buckingham Palace – which was in a poor state of repair.

That grant comes from taking 25% of the profits of the Crown Estate with the rest of the profits going to the Treasury for government spending.

In other words, if the Royal Family didn’t take 25% of it – all the profits would be returned to the taxpayer – which is why the Sovereign Grant money is referred to as ‘public money’.

It has a special clause that means the grant can go up when profits go up. But if profits go down, the Sovereign Grant cannot be lower than the year before and will remain at the same amount.

And whilst the Sovereign Grant publishes an annual report each year on wages, the costs of different types of travel and public visits at home and abroad – it does not set out the costs of security.

The protection given to individual royals in the form of Police Protection Officers, and the police guards at royal residences, are provided by the Home Office and it never shares how much it spends on security for royals or senior politicians.

Ceremonial palace guards and mounted regiments often seen in and around Buckingham Palace are provided by the UK military – and funded by the Ministry of Defence (MoD).

Both the MoD and Home Office are government departments paid for by the taxpayer.

This is why Republic claims the true cost of running the British Monarchy is much higher.

The group says the Royal Family could be run for £5-£10 million which is what it claims the Republic of Ireland spends on the office of its head of state, the Irish President.

There is also a dispute over the profits from two big estates, which the royals claim are privately owned and therefore a private income stream, but Republic claims are public estates.

The Duchy of Lancaster provides an income for the Monarch while the Duchy of Cornwall was set up in the 1300s to provide an independent source of revenue for the heir to the throne.

King Charles, like his mother before him, is known as the Duke of Lancaster and Prince William is the current Duke of Cornwall.

The report by Republic says the estates are owned by ‘the Crown’ rather than owned ‘personally’ by Charles and William.

It suggests the two duchies be folded into the Crown Estate to make one large estate where the all the combined profits go back to the taxpayer – once the Sovereign Grant has been removed.

Republic also claims local authorities face huge costs for hosting royal visits which go unreported.

Royal sources say their accounts are open for all to see in the Sovereign Grant report each year and the duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall also publish their accounts in the public domain.