The Duke of Edinburgh paid the market rate for his royal residence while his brother Prince Andrew was contracted to pay only “one peppercorn, if demanded” for Royal Lodge.
Details from a National Audit Office report show that while the King’s youngest brother, Edward, had to pay a “market value” for his Surrey residence, Bagshot Park, until at least 2007, Andrew never did.
Last week The Times revealed that Andrew paid no rent on the 30-room Windsor property after contributing £8.5 million to refurbishments having taken over the lease in 2003, with this constituting a significant taxpayer subsidy on its true worth.
In a further twist, the key details of Edward’s lease after it was renewed in 2007 were redacted on the Land Registry, making it impossible to establish whether he continued to pay a market rent.
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Bagshot Park
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Edward was reported to have extended the lease to 150 years for £5 million in 2007. Despite releasing an unredacted copy of Andrew’s lease, the Crown Estate refused to disclose Edward’s at the 51-acre Bagshot Park, his residence for more than 25 years.
The mansion is grade II listed and was built between 1875 and 1879 on instructions from Queen Victoria as a home for her third son, Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn.
Edward, who inherited the title of Duke of Edinburgh after his father Prince Philip’s death, initially leased the property for 50 years for £5,000 a year in March 1998.
Unlike Royal Lodge, the Crown Estate received two alternative offers for Bagshot Park, one for the establishment of a conference centre and another to convert the property into a hotel, after the Ministry of Defence handed back its lease on the site in 1996.
The sum later went up to £90,000 a year — described as “market value” — after Edward paid £1.36 million to help renovate the property, with the Crown Estate covering the rest of the £3 million refurbishment costs.
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Royal Lodge
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The Crown Estate’s profits are passed on to the benefit of the taxpayer and spending on matters of questionable public benefit have come under scrutiny after The Times revealed Andrew had been living at Royal Lodge on such favourable terms.
However, redactions to the lease mean that the public are not allowed to know how much Edward now pays in rent.
A copy of the lease obtained by The Times includes a handwritten note from the royal lawyers Farrer & Co confirming the version available on the Land Registry had been redacted. “We certify that this is a copy of the lease date 16th August 2007 after removal of all the prejudicial information … and that is otherwise a true copy,” the note reads.
As well as redacting the rent paid under the lease, the amount paid to extend the lease was also obscured, as was a section of the tenant’s covenants that would indicate if the rent paid from 2007 would be peppercorn.
The Palace has, so far, failed to remove Andrew from Royal Lodge, despite him stepping down as a working royal in 2019 and relinquishing his titles this month, when more details of his close association with the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein were revealed.
Andrew’s use of the property came into further question this week as it emerged he hosted Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and Harvey Weinstein at Royal Lodge, months after an arrest warrant had been issued for Epstein for sexually assaulting a minor.
They visited before attending Princess Beatrice’s 18th birthday at Windsor Castle in July 2006. While it was known they had attended an event at the castle, it was not publicly known that they had been hosted by the prince at his residence.
On Monday The Sun reported that Andrew was “in talks” to move out of Royal Lodge but he wanted two homes, one for him and one for his former wife, Sarah Ferguson, on the Windsor estate.
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Andrew wants financial compensation if he moves out before the end of his lease.
Questions have been raised as to why royal finances have remained secret. Royal wills, and details of the private royal finances and secret trusts used to fund their activities, have been kept from the public, despite the key role the royal family play in British public life.
Unlike other public officials, correspondence with royal family members is also subject to special exemption from the Freedom of Information Act, making it harder to investigate how royals use their influence.
The Crown Estate and Buckingham Palace declined to comment.
