Queen to get a 5% pay rise: Monarch's income to hit almost £38 million next year after Crown Estate profits soar



Sovereign Grant to rise from £36.1million to £37.9million in 2014

New rules mean Queen's income is linked to profits of Crown Estate

Buckingham Palace publishes accounts for 2012 Jubilee year



The Queen is to receive an inflation-busting 5 per cent ‘pay rise’ next year, giving her an annual income of £37.9million.

Palace officials admit that the timing of the announcement, which coincides with yet another round of Government belt-tightening, is ‘not ideal’.

But they insist that the country still boasts a ‘value for money monarchy’ that costs each person in the country just 52.5p per year.

According to detailed annual royal accounts released yesterday, the Queen was given £900,000 extra from the public purse in 2012/13, a 2.6 per cent increase.

That enabled her annual spending to rise from £32.4million to £33.3million.

Pay rise: The Queen, pictured yesterday with the Grenadier in the gardens of Buckingham Palace, is to receive a five per cent rise in income

Deal: Under new rules agreed by George Osborne, the Queen receives 15 per cent of Crown Estate profits Until last year the monarch was funded by a complicated combination of civil list payments and government grants. Following an extensive government review of royal finances, she now receives one single pot of money known as the Sovereign Grant to spend largely as she wishes. RELATED ARTICLES Previous

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£2billion of NHS cash will go to social care to stop elderly... Share this article Share It is taken from the Crown Estate, a wealthy portfolio of agricultural land, buildings and property – ranging from a retail park in Liverpool to London’s Regent Street and Ascot racecourse – which has historically belonged to the monarchy but the profits of which have, since the reign of George III, gone to the Treasury. As a result of protracted and sometimes combative negotiations with Downing Street, the monarch is now, for the first time in several hundred years, entitled to keep 15 per cent of its profits with the rest going to the Treasury. The first year was set at £31million, which included a Diamond Jubilee ‘bonus’, with the palace using £2.3 million from its own savings to fund other celebratory events. Yesterday the Crown Estate announced record revenue of £253million. Its entire holdings are now worth £8.1billion, suggesting even greater rises in income for the monarchy in years to come. They set out details of spending in the 2012-13 financial year - one of the Queen's busiest and most high profile in recent times. She celebrated her Diamond Jubilee in June, before playing a key role in the London Olympics - including appearing in a film at the Opening Ceremony where she appeared to parachute into the Olympic Stadium.

Funding: The Sovereign Grant covers the Queen's travel, PR, and living costs, and the upkeep of the country's crumbling palaces

The cost to the taxpayer of supporting the monarchy rose by just under £1 million to £33.3 million during the Diamond Jubilee year, Buckingham Palace accounts showed today.

The Queen’s official expenditure increased by £900,000 from £32.4 million during the 2011-12 financial year to £33.3 million in 2012-13, according to the royal public finances annual report.

The taxpayer funds used to pay for official air and rail travel at home and abroad for members of the Royal Family fell by £500,000 from £5 million in 2011-12 to £4.5 million in 2012-13.

Decorating: The taxpayer has spent £1million refurbishing Kate and William's new Kensington Palace home Sir Alan Reid, Keeper of the Privy Purse – the Queen’s chief ‘money man’ – yesterday welcomed the extra cash, but insisted that most of it would be spent on a ‘massive backlog’ of repairs to royal palaces, which the Queen holds in trust on behalf of the nation. Despite £9.1million spent on the upkeep of royal residences and other buildings last year, Buckingham Palace has long complained of having to put off millions of pounds worth of essential maintenance because of real-terms falls in funding. Buckets are frequently used to catch water leaks in the picture gallery while none of the state rooms, regularly used for entertaining dignitaries and foreign heads of state, has been decorated or rewired in more than 60 years. ‘We have a massive backlog of property repairs that we need to get cracking on,’ said Sir Alan. He also revealed that the palace badly needed to overhaul its IT system which was still running on Office 2003 – ‘although you probably all think we are using Office 1497 the way we work around here,’ he joked.

Home sweet home: Kensington Palace, where the royal couple have given their apartment a £1million makeover

The annual review report has revealed that like most of her subjects the Queen was hit last year by rising utility bills, up by 40 per cent to £3.2million.

Payroll costs for her 436 staff – of which apparently 20 per cent belong to a union – rose by almost 5 per cent to £18.3million.

There was, perhaps unsurprisingly in a year which celebrated both the Diamond Jubilee and the London Olympics, a small rise in the cost of official entertaining to £1.9million.

But Sir Alan insisted that the palace had been so successful in cutting costs overall that it had achieved a real-terms reduction in spending of 24 per cent over five years.

Asked yesterday whether David Cameron supported the increase to the Sovereign Grant, a No 10 spokesman said: ‘There is a process that is gone through. I don’t think the Prime Minister disagrees with that process.’

Smiles: The latest financial accounts from Buckingham Palace cover 2012-13, which included the celebrations for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee when she watched a flotilla of a 1,000 boats on the Thames

Stunt: The Queen played a central role in the opening ceremony of the London Olympics, starring in a film with James Bond actor Daniel Craig (left) before appearing to parachute into the Olympic Stadium (right)



But Graham Smith, chief executive of anti-monarchist campaign group Republic, said it was ‘unbelievable’ the Queen would ‘sit silently by as she is handed millions more in public money’.

He added: ‘The Crown Estate is not – and never has been – the personal property of the royals. The Windsors have no more right to its revenue than I do. To claim that it should fund their lavish lifestyle is deceitful and dishonest.

‘Of course, the costs published today are just the tip of the iceberg. When security and the costs of local royal visits are included the true figure is likely to be over £200million each year.’

To top up its funds, the palace have set up a number of money-spinning schemes such as renting out land adjacent to Kensington Palace – which netted £400,000 last year – and other royal buildings for charity and corporate functions.

The canny Queen also sells off her excess Christmas poinsettias, garden plants and shrubs at the Windsor Castle farm shop plus garden centres in Berkshire and Surrey.

* Villagers in Goathland, North Yorkshire – scene of the hit rural police drama Heartbeat – are protesting at being charged by the Queen to use their own driveways.

Through the Duchy of Lancaster, Her Majesty owns grass verges which separate every house from the road.