{"id":147495,"date":"2018-06-28T01:50:52","date_gmt":"2018-06-28T01:50:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/english\/queens-taxpayer-funded-costs-up-13-in-2017-18\/"},"modified":"2018-06-28T01:50:52","modified_gmt":"2018-06-28T01:50:52","slug":"queens-taxpayer-funded-costs-up-13-in-2017-18","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/english\/queens-taxpayer-funded-costs-up-13-in-2017-18\/","title":{"rendered":"Queen&#8217;s taxpayer-funded costs up 13% in 2017-18"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure>                                  <img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Buckingham Palace\" src=\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/320\/cpsprodpb\/5297\/production\/_102234112_palace_pa.jpg\"\/>Image copyright                  PA                                                    <\/figure>\n<p class=\"caps\">The Queen&#039;s taxpayer-funded costs rose by 13% in the past year, partly due to the refurbishment of Buckingham Palace.<\/p>\n<p>Accounts show the public funds used by the Queen for official expenditure and duties went up from \u00a341.9m to \u00a347.4m.<\/p>\n<p>More than \u00a34m was spent on the initial phase of improvements at the palace, including the removal of old wiring, while \u00a321.4m went on payroll costs.<\/p>\n<p>The Queen&#039;s official expenditure is met from public funds in exchange for revenue from the Crown Estate.<\/p>\n<p>The &quot;core&quot; sovereign grant is based on 15% of the net surplus of the Crown Estate, as it was two years previously.<\/p>\n<p>But from this year, the total grant is based on 25% of the surplus - an increase intended to meet the costs of refurbishing Buckingham Palace.<\/p>\n<p>Overall, the total Sovereign Grant was \u00a376.1m - but \u00a328.7m was transferred to reserves, most of which is intended to pay for the renovation.<\/p>\n<figure>                                                                                                       Image copyright                  Reuters                                                    <\/figure>\n<p>The Sovereign Grant accounts also show an increase in travel costs, from \u00a34.5m to \u00a34.7m.<\/p>\n<p>The most expensive trip was Prince Charles&#039;s tour of India and the Far East in November 2017, which cost \u00a3362,149.<\/p>\n<p>Over the year, the prince used the Royal Train - at a cost of about \u00a320,000 a trip - twice as often as the Queen.<\/p>\n<p>The Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall carried out 619 UK engagements last year. The Queen undertook 154 official engagements, down from 162 the previous year.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Queen to receive \u00a36m public pay increase<\/li>\n<li>MPs back \u00a3369m Buckingham Palace revamp<\/li>\n<li>Reality Check: Who&#039;s paying for the royal wedding?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Separately, figures from Clarence House - the Prince of Wales&#039; private office - show an increase in funding of 40% for the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Duke of Sussex.<\/p>\n<p>The total went from \u00a33.5m to \u00a35m. A Palace spokesman declined to be drawn on how much of the rise was related to Meghan, the new Duchess of Sussex.  <\/p>\n<p>Separate figures show the Crown Estate provided \u00a3329.4m to the Treasury, a like-for-like increase of around 4% compared with last year&#039;s figures for England only.<\/p>\n<h2>What is the Crown Estate?<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>An independent commercial property business and one of the largest property portfolios in the UK<\/li>\n<li>The majority of assets are in London, but the estate also owns property in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland<\/li>\n<li>Holdings include Windsor Great Park and Ascot racecourse, but most of the portfolio is made up of residential property, commercial offices, shops, businesses and retail parks<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Sir Michael Stevens, the new keeper of the Privy Purse, who oversees the monarch&#039;s finances, said: &quot;There are three generations of the Royal Family at work together in support of the Queen.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;Each generation brings its own style and personality. What everyone shares is a desire for the monarchy to reflect and serve all parts of our country and the wider Commonwealth.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>On the renovations of Buckingham Palace, he said: &quot;The programme addresses the urgent need to overhaul the Palace&#039;s essential services - some of which have not been updated since the 1950s. <\/p>\n<p>&quot;These important works will help avert the very real danger of a catastrophic building failure such as a flood or fire.&quot;<\/p>\n<figure>             <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/images\/ic\/720x405\/p058pdnb.jpg\"\/>Media playback is unsupported on your device<figcaption>Media captionFrom 2017: What does the Queen cost us?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Image copyright PA The Queen&#039;s taxpayer-funded costs rose by 13% in the past year, partly due to the refurbishment of Buckingham Palace. Accounts show the public funds used by the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":147496,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-147495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147495\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}