King Charles and Prince William earn millions from the taxpayer from rents on properties on their private estates – including a prison, schools and a building used by the NHS, it has emerged.
The Mirror reports details of how the two most senior members of the Royal Family make £50million a year from their inherited estates can be revealed for the first time.
Working with Vera Productions and Channel 4 Dispatches, the newspaper obtained from the Land Registry the addresses of thousands of properties in the two royal Duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster, owned by Prince William and King Charles III.
They show how the Duchy earns £1.5m a year in rent – or £37.5m over 25 years – for HMP Dartmoor, a prison that now lies empty due to high levels of radon gas in the cells. Seven schools pay the Duchy more than £600,000 in rent over the lifetime of their leases.
The Duchy of Lancaster will earn £11.4m from a 15-year lease on a warehouse to Guys & St Thomas NHS Trust for its ambulance fleet.
Campaigner Guy Shrubsole, author of Who Owns England, told the Mirror: “I think this asks quite searching questions about how they are making their profits.
“Why are there not peppercorn rents or social rents being charged for the NHS for example?”
The Duchy of Cornwall also earns money from the military that both Charles and William trained in. The Ministry of Defence refused to reveal how much it paid the Duchy for the right to train troops on its land in Dartmoor.
But documents reveal the Duchy has received more than a million pounds from the Navy since 2004 for jetties and moorings for warships.
King Charles III was for many years a patron of Macmillan Cancer Support but the Duchy of Cornwall earned £22m in rent from an office block in London that housed a number of charities including Macmillan, Comic Relief and Marie Curie.
The documents also reveal how the Duchy of Lancaster, owned by Charles since 2022, is set to profit from a new generation of wind farms.
It owns the coastline from Barrow-in-Furness to the River Mersey and five leases reveal the Duchy will received at least £28m from power cables crossing this land.
A Duchy of Cornwall spokesperson it was “a private estate with a commercial imperative”.
The Mirror reports the Duchy of Lancaster said it “operates as a commercial company” and that “while His Majesty The King takes a close interest in the work of the Duchy, the day-to-day management of the portfolio is the responsibility of the Council and executive team”.
Express.co.uk has contacted both Buckingham Palace and Kensington Palace for comment.
