The Crown Estate thread

[wordler]

Thought it might be useful to have one thread to discuss the Crown Estate, leases, grace and favour rents, future potential transparency and ownership.

What residential leases does The Crown Estate have with members of the Royal Family?

The Crown Estate submitted a response to the Public Accounts Committee in November 2025.

committees.parliament.uk/publications/50543/documents/275710/default/

And this is the Crown Estate website which lists the main team who manage it. Also include the annual accounts statement etc

www.thecrownestate.co.uk

Interesting @wordlerbut somehow I think posters probably want to post comments on every thread! 🤔

Probably 😆

We talk a lot about better transparency being important for the future of the monarchy on here so I thought it was interesting to find this website which I’ve never seen before going into a lot of depth on the full scope of the Crown Estate.

Also seeing the extensive team who manage it.

Also the document I linked to goes into depth on the five properties connected to royals which are managed by the Crown Estate and how the different leases were reached.

A good idea ! But you and I both know that an echoing chamber is no fun for some and without people to argue with and insult, there is no point in debate. 🤷‍♀️

Here’s a funny giff for you in the meantime ❤️

Thanks @wordler.

I had linked that response to the Public Accounts Committee on previous threads.

I have a question that I had considered starting a thread to ask, but will ask it here:

Are the long-term leases of the Crown Estate properties similar legally to buying a leasehold property elsewhere?
It seems that a large amount is paid up front, with a smaller amount being paid regularly. That seems similar to me to a large amount (or mortgage) being paid, with associated service charges etc.

I am asking as I have only rented, and then had mortgages on freehold properties. I didn't want to ask in the middle of one of the more partisan threads.

I good question @bluegreygreen, I would like to know the answer to this too.

I think it is similar - you buy the lease and it has a fixed term, you are responsible for renovations and there will also be yearly charges associated with the property. You are also able to sell on the lease if you want to, for either profit or loss depending on the housing market.

I've mentioned several times on these threads an example of a Windsor property owned by the Crown Estate but leased by a non-royal family is Fort Belvedere.

Built in the 1750s was home to various members of the royal family with the final royal to live there was Edward VIII until his abdication - he was given it as a 'gift' by his father but as it was still Crown owned it was never really his to own, he just occupied it as a grace and favour property which he paid to maintain.

He thought it would always be his to return to but (a bit like Harry and Frogmore) while he was living in France after the abdication, he was told he couldn't have it anymore as it was a perk of the job he'd given up.

Then it was empty for 15 years before being offered to be 'rented' privately on a long lease of 99 years.

That lease has been sold on several times to different people and the current occupants are a billionaire Canadian family who have live there since the 1980s.

The lease expires in 2053 so at that point the lease will need to be renewed or given up and bought by someone else.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Belvedere,_Surrey

The transparency question for the Crown Estate is when they offer leases, do they offer the same or similar terms to everyone?

Is the length of the lease and the cost of buying the lease based on market forces, or are some people offered better deals than others? And are some people excluded even if they have the money?

Going back to Fort Belvedere, when it was first offered up to lease it was 'bought' by Gerald Lascelles on a 99-year lease. When he was short of money after 20 years of living there, he put the lease on the market for 'offers over £200,000', I'm not sure how much it went for in the end to a son of the Emir of Dubai in 1976, who kept it for less than a decade and then sold it on again to the Westons - again not sure what they paid for it in the 80s. Still, it's theirs until 2053 (as long as they meet the conditions of the lease) and they could sell it on before then if they could find a buyer for a relatively short lease and pocket any profit they might be able to make.

Now Gerald Lascelles wasn't just any old member of the public - he was a grandson of George V, a first cousin of the late Queen - was he originally offered a 'deal' on the lease in the 1950s?

The transparency question for the Crown Estate is when they offer leases, do they offer the same or similar terms to everyone?
Is the length of the lease and the cost of buying the lease based on market forces, or are some people offered better deals than others? And are some people excluded even if they have the money?

As for the first, they should do - the Board of the Crown Estate (all independent) observe the Nolan principles and the Chief Executive is bound by the Managing Public Money rules, with personal responsibility for leading the organisation in an ethical manner, seeking good value for money and securing the quality and integrity of its business. They are accountable to HMT for this, as principal beneficiary of their income.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-7-principles-of-public-life/the-7-principles-of-public-life--2

As for the second point, there will almost certainly be vetting rules for some properties given there will be issues of national security attached to properties in Windsor Great Park for example.

Also on the first point, the Crown Estate’s Chief Executive wrote last year to the Public Accounts Committee last year about royal family leases of Crown Estate Properties.

He pointed out that while many of the leases pre-date the current committee:

“The records available indicate that the Commissioners at the time sought to
fulfil their statutory function and duties under the Act. Where relevant, the records also show the Commissioners of the time considered their specific duty … In some cases, such as Royal Lodge and Bagshot Park, the records we have show that these arrangements were supported by the advice of independent external valuation agents. In 2005, the National Audit Office also published a report summarising The Crown Estate’s residential leases with members of the Royal Family to which we refer in this response.

I also want to reassure the Committee that in governing The Crown Estate today, Commissioners seek to ensure that our statutory obligations are fulfilled in respect of residential leases agreed with members of the Royal Family, as demonstrated most recently with Forest Lodge. This includes seeking external independent advice and valuations, negotiating arrangements at arms-length to ensure appropriate market terms are agreed, and ensuring that HM Treasury, as
our sponsoring department, is kept informed as appropriate”

https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/50543/documents/275710/default/

Thanks @Serenster.

I was going to mention security and Windsor Great Park, but got lost going down a different rabbit hole.

I'm leaving a link to the Crown Estate Act here, in case someone (probably me) wants to refer to it at some point.

Crown Estate Act 1961 (last updated 2025)

I think it's quite interesting to see the CE is careful to cite the records they have 'available'.

It does beg the question what any unavailable records might contain.

I find that completely normal wording actual for a personal attestation like this letter, actually.

Records get lost, destroyed as part of regular (and completely normal) destruction policies, mislabelled and misfiled, subject to third party events (Iron Mountain, a big storage warehouse company, had a massive fire at one of their UK storage premises in the early 2000s - so many organisations lost everything stored at that site as a result). Some of the leases they were being asked about had been granted more than 25 years ago at the time that letter was written - it is quite reasonable they they could no longer lay their hands on every document or piece of information that had been created about them.

No chief executive could ever write that they have reviewed all records - and no lawyer would advise them to say that! You can only review what you have, and what a reasonable search reveals.

But these are records pertaining to Crown property.

It's a bit surprising they might not have been lovingly handled and preserved.

Ha! I feel vindicated! I mentioned the Iron Mountain Fire as an example of how with the best will in the world, records can be lost (it impacted banks, law firms, NHS trusts etc…) and an idle google confirms questions in parliament stating that the Crown estate was also impacted: “The Crown Estate had 220 boxes of legal documents stored at Iron Mountain, of which 65 were destroyed in the fire. This amounted to around 7,300 documents ranging in date from 1968 to 2005. The documents were leases, deeds, conveyances, licences and the like, some expired and some current”

So yes, something like that means the organisation can only ever refer to reviewing “available” information.

https://hansard.parliament.uk/Lords/2006-11-07/debates/06110758000060/OfficialDocumentsTwelvetreesCrescentWarehouse

But these are records pertaining to Crown property.
It's a bit surprising they might not have been lovingly handled and preserved.

Have you never worked in an office? 🤣

I have, yes.

But only where important information was securely duplicated and backed-up.

I once worked in an office where important records from the 1990s had been backed up electronically on storage tapes. Cutting edge technology at the time. 25 years later though the back up storage tapes were completely obsolete and it was near-impossible to locate the machines that could restore them. Roll that forward another 10 years or so and they’d be practically inaccessible, if not potentially corrupted…

As I said, with the best will in the world no organisation can retain all its records forever. The cost of doing so is prohibitive for starters. And those that contain pesional data you are not allowed to keep indefinitely.

(Total aside - feel free to ignore)

The subject of storing information is really interesting.

I was listening to a tech podcast recently where people were developing a method of using lasers to engrave data into (not on to) glass, with the intention that a large amount of information would be held safely in a small volume over many years.

I started thinking about all the recent (last 50 years or so) technological advances that are now obsolete, and information that cannot be read - and yet we can still read paper/papyrus/parchment (e.g. Dead Sea Scrolls) or even wood, clay or stone artefacts (Rosetta Stone, Vindolanda wooden tablets etc).

Are we becoming the civilisation that will not have any form of writing left for others to read?

I guess we just have to be thankful then that the records on MW's RL lease survived the twin threats of being engulfed in an inferno and being stored on deteriorating media and were available to be picked over in the interests of booting him out.

Quite arcane.

I’m interested in the Duchy of Lancaster. Their leases and subleases on flats are held by or in trust for the Transferors who are exempt charities, and the Management companies interest in the registered titles of leaseholders The management companies are nominee bare trusts which acts on behalf of the landlord and as separate covenant act on behalf of individual Lessee, the freehold interest transferred to the Management companies trusts so leaseholders as members of management co trusts are also lessees in long residential leases entirely and wholly liable for effective management
of the Property.

I have read that three times and still don’t know what you are trying to say!

And in a vanishingly rare moment we finally agree 😂