Is Royal Family Funding Off the Rails? Part One

The Sovereign Grant is set to jump to 8 figures next year and not every one is seeing the value for the money

Last week, the British Royal Family dropped the Sovereign Grant Report for 24/25. (The Sovereign Grant is the annual sum the British Royal Family receives from the government based on a percentage of the profits from the Crown Estate** to cover public duty-related expenses like travel, staff, and maintenance of historic properties. It doesn’t include royal security costs or the Duchy of Lancaster and Cornwall.)

Along with the report was the news that funding will rise to £132.1 million ($180,000,000) a year for the next two years, up from £86.3 million ($118,000,000). The funding hike, we’ve been told, relates to the 10-year Buckingham Palace refurbishment project.

While many Royal Rota editors focused on the “cost-saving measure” of decommissioning the royal train,

The Times UK described the decommissioned train in a commentary as “an enticing morsel designed to distract attention from less palatable aspects of the royal finances.”

Times UK Op. Ed.

In an attempt to soften the blow, James Chalmers, manager of the monarch’s financial affairs, tried to justify the spending and future increase in a statement published along with the 164-page report:

“Soft power is hard to measure, but its value is, I believe, now firmly understood at home and abroad as the core themes of the new reign have come into even sharper focus.”

Is it firmly understood, though?

The Price of Soft Power: What’s in the Report

Planes, trains, helicopters, and automobiles

The decommissioned royal train has received an inordinate amount of media coverage from rota editors desperate to put a positive spin on the report. The train was used twice last year to the tune of £78,000, and costs over a million pounds to maintain yearly. Decommissioning it is a sensible move, but it’s a “painless sacrifice” to make, as The Times UK put it, and is out of touch when people are struggling to meet their basic needs.

The real story is

the eyewatering sum of travel costs. King Charles and Queen Camilla’s Australia Tour cost a whopping £400,000, which doesn’t include security costs. Prince William had the 3rd most expensive tour with his “brief, but impactful” trip to Estonia, which cost £55,846. There are even some residence-to-residence travel arrangements that are well into the 5-figure range.

A question I’d love to see the media ask Kensington Palace is how Prince William plans to be a global statesman in the future while lowering travel costs.

Buckingham Palace Refurbishment Project

A good chunk of the Sovereign Grant Report is dedicated to the Buckingham Palace refurbishment project, including a July 2024 National Audit Office (NAO) Value for Money Audit. While there are positive findings about the project’s progress and management, there are monetary concerns related to backloading major work to the final two years of the project. The NAO also recommended that the Household:

[…]could do more to bring all this information together to ensure that everyone involved in delivering benefits can understand progress and actions needed.

Measuring progress = showing value.

Show Me the Money Value

Speaking of measuring progress, there’s a single page dedicated to social media stats. One of the more shocking revelations is that this was the first year they’ve tracked social media analytics. And it shows in this stunningly elementary report.

Which social accounts were included in this report? Are the social media impressions unique? This is only the first report, and they’re already lowering expectations, stating that engagement is expected to drop in the future. You’ve only been tracking for a year; there’s not enough data to warrant that statement. On top of that, what is the value besides seemingly impressive numbers?

How the Royal Household will track the progress in its various value adds vs. cost, like this updated “Purpose” statement, is also missing.

Here’s the frustrating truth: No matter what is in the report, how well or how poorly the Royals perform, or the economic hardships Britons face, it will not impact the amount of money they receive. If the Crown Estate’s profits fall, the British Royal Family still receives a top off from the Treasury to maintain the same grant amount as the year prior. This has been true since the 2011 Sovereign Grant Act, but more and more people are starting to pay attention. Maybe it’s inevitable that after a popular monarch dies, there’s a renewed interest in how things are done. But, I believe it’s in no small part due to investigative journalism into the royals and their finances. Notably, there was a months-long investigation and exposé on the Duchies last year, which is yielding some tangible results.

That’s where we’ll pick things up in part two.

-Meredith

Thank you to my super sleuth, Amy, for research assistance.

**The name “Crown Estate” is misleading. We’ll talk about that more in part two.