The finances of the British royal family come from a number of sources. The monarch and some of his family are supported financially by means of the Sovereign Grant, which comes from the government and is calculated as a percentage of profits from the Crown Estate, and which is intended to meet the costs of the sovereign's official expenditures. This includes the costs of the upkeep of the various royal residences, staffing, travel and state visits, public engagements, and official entertainment. Other sources of income include revenues from the duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall, income from assets of other trusts, income from private investments, and a parliamentary annuity.
The Keeper of the Privy Purse is Head of the Privy Purse and Treasurer's Office and has overall responsibility for the management of the sovereign's financial affairs.The Privy Purse and Treasurer's Office , accessed 13 June 2010
Sovereign Grant
The Sovereign Grant is an annual payment made by the Treasury to the monarch to support official duties. It replaced the previous system of financing the Royal Household through a combination of civil list payments and grants-in-aid. The amount of the Sovereign Grant is linked to the profits generated by the Crown Estate which are passed to the Treasury. The annual value of the Sovereign Grant rises with the Crown Estate profits, but it cannot decrease if Crown Estate revenues fall.
The Sovereign Grant Annual Report states that the Sovereign Grant was £31 million for 2012–13, £36.1 million for 2013–14 and £37.9 million for 2014–15. The amount of the Sovereign Grant is equal to 15% of the income account net surplus of the Crown Estate for the financial year that began two years previously. Step 4 of subsection 6(1), and subsection 6(4), of the Act provide a mechanism to prevent the amount of the Sovereign Grant increasing beyond what is necessary because of the growth in Crown Estate revenue. Under the Sovereign Grant the National Audit Office is able to audit the Royal Household.
On 18 November 2016, a plan was announced to increase the Sovereign Grant from 15% to 25% to renovate and repair Buckingham Palace. The percentage is set to revert to 15% when the project is finished in 2027. As a result, the Sovereign Grant amounted to £76.1 million for 2017–18, which included a dedicated amount of £30.4 million to renovate Buckingham Palace. As of March 2019, the Sovereign Grant Reserve amounts to £44.4 million, with £36.8 million of it set aside for work on Buckingham Palace. In July 2023, the Treasury announced that owing to a substantial increase in income to the Crown Estate primarily from new wind farm leases on the foreshore, the grant will be 12% of the Crown Estate's net profits in the following year, down from 25%, although still an increase in real pounds over time. As of 2026 the Grant was set to rise to £138m with plans for the core grant to double from around £50m to £100m in 2027.
Civil list
Until 1760, the monarch met all official expenses from hereditary revenues, which included the profits of the Crown Estate (the royal property portfolio). King George III agreed to surrender the hereditary revenues of the Crown in return for payments called the civil list. Under this arrangement, the Crown Estate remained the property of the sovereign, but the hereditary revenues of the crown were placed at the disposal of the House of Commons. The civil list was paid from public funds and was intended to support the exercise of the monarch's duties as head of state of Great Britain. This arrangement persisted from 1760 until 2012. In modern times, the Government's profits from the Crown Estate always significantly exceeded the civil list. Under the civil list arrangements, the royal family faced criticism for the lack of transparency surrounding Royal finances. The National Audit Office was not entitled to audit the Royal Household.
Queen Elizabeth II received £7.9 million a year from the civil list between 2001 and 2012. The total income of the Royal Household from the Treasury was always significantly larger than the civil list because it included additional income such as grants-in-aid from the Treasury and revenues from the Duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster. The total Royal Household income for the financial years 2011–12 and 2012–13 was £30 million per annum, followed by a 14% cut in the following year. However, the Treasury provided an additional £1 million to pay for Diamond Jubilee celebrations in 2012.
Royal expenditure differs from income owing to the use of a Reserve Fund, which can be added to or drawn from. The official reported annual expenditure of the Head of State was £41.5 million for the 2008–09 financial year. This figure did not include the cost of security provided by the police and the Army and some other expenses. The campaign group Republic, which promotes republicanism in the United Kingdom, says that the full annual cost of the British monarchy is £510 million a year, when including lost revenue from the two duchies and potential commercial use of the royal palaces, security costs, and costs born by local councils during royal visits.
Assets held in trust by the Sovereign A number of possessions are held in trust by the Sovereign. These possessions are exempt from inheritance tax.
The Crown Estate is one of the largest property portfolios in the United Kingdom, producing £211 million for the Treasury in the financial year 2007–08 and with holdings of £7.3 billion in 2011. The Crown Estate is not the personal property of the monarch. It cannot be sold by the sovereign in a personal capacity, nor do any revenues, or debts, from the estate accrue to him. Instead, the Crown Estate is owned by the monarch in right of the Crown, a corporation sole representing the legal embodiment of the state, solely for the duration of the monarch's reign. It is held in trust and governed by Act of Parliament, to which it makes an annual report. It is run independently and its profits go to the Treasury. Revenue from the Crown Estate has been predicted to double in real terms between 2010 and 2020 with additional lease revenues deriving from the development of offshore wind farms within Britain's Renewable Energy Zone, the rights of which were granted to the Crown Estate by the Energy Act 2004. The Duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall are entities holding land and other assets to produce an income for, respectively, the British Sovereign (now King Charles III) and the monarch's eldest son (if he is next in line to the throne). The revenue profits of the Duchy of Lancaster are presented to the Sovereign each year and form part of the Privy Purse, providing income for both the official and private expenses of the monarch. The Duke of Cornwall receives revenue for charitable work and official activities. These financial arrangements also cover the official expenditure of some members of his immediate family. In 1971, a private members' bill introduced to Parliament by the Labour MP Willie Hamilton to nationalise the two duchies and the Crown lands was defeated, although more than 100 MPs supported it. The occupied official royal residences such as Buckingham Palace, Holyrood Palace and Windsor Castle are held in trust by the sovereign, as is the Palace of Westminster. The Royal Household is expected to use the Sovereign Grant to maintain the residences. In May 2009, the Queen requested an extra £4 million annually from the government to carry out a backlog of repairs to Buckingham Palace. In 2010, the Royal Household requested an additional grant from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport but were refused on the basis that the scheme was "aimed at schools, hospitals, councils and housing associations for heating programmes which benefit low-income families". More than a third of the Royal estate was in disrepair by 2012–13 according to a report by the Public Accounts Committee. The cost of restoration was estimated to be £50 million, but the Reserve Fund was at a historic low of £1 million. The monarch is also responsible for using the Sovereign Grant to pay the wages of 431 of the Royal Household staff, amounting to £18.2 million in 2014–15. In 2013, The Guardian reported that Buckingham Palace was using zero-hour contracts for its summer staff. In 2015, it was reported that at least four senior officials had been made redundant to reduce costs. The Royal Collection is the art collection of the British royal family. It is one of the largest and most important art collections in the world, containing more than 7,000 paintings, 40,000 watercolours and drawings, about 150,000 old master prints, historical photographs, tapestries, furniture, ceramics, books, gold and silver plate, arms and armour, jewellery and other works of art. The collection includes the Crown Jewels in the Tower of London (including the crown, orb and sceptre). It is physically dispersed between 13 Royal residences and former residences across Britain. Although the collection belongs to the sovereign, it is not his personal property as a private individual. Instead the collection is held in trust by the King for his successors and the nation. The Treasury says these assets are "vested in the sovereign and cannot be alienated". Income is generated by the collection from public admissions and other sources. This income is received by the Royal Collection Trust, the collection's management charity, and not by the King. The Royal Archives comprises collections including diaries, letters, household papers and administrative records of the British monarchy. Royal palaces and parks are traditionally the property of the monarch, but those no longer occupied by the monarchy or used by the government are generally operated by public charities, Historic Royal Palaces, and Royal Parks.
Private estate of the Sovereign Queen Elizabeth II had a private income from her personal investment portfolio, though her personal wealth and income were not known. In 2002, she inherited her mother's estate, thought to have been worth £70 million (the equivalent of about £ today). Sandringham House and Balmoral Castle are privately owned by the Sovereign.
Estimates of personal wealth Jock Colville, a former private secretary to Queen Elizabeth II (when she was Princess Elizabeth) and a director of her bank, Coutts, estimated her wealth at £2 million in 1971 (the equivalent of about £ today).The Times, 9 July 1971; Pimlott, p. 401. An official statement from Buckingham Palace in 1993 called estimates of £100 million "grossly overstated".Lord Chamberlain Lord Airlie quoted in Hoey, p. 225 and Pimlott, p. 561
Forbes magazine estimated the Queen's net worth at around $500 million (about £325 million) in 2011, while an analysis by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index put it at $425 million (about £275 million) in 2015. In 2012, the Sunday Times estimated the Queen's wealth as being £310 million ($504 million), and that year the Queen received a Guinness World Record as Wealthiest Queen.