53p a year
The Queen gets a £2million pay rise | Royal | News | Daily Express
£38m a year for our glorious Queen? What an absolute bargain.
The Queen's income from the taxpayer will rise to £38million because of a deal linking the Royal Household's Sovereign Grant from the Government to 15 per cent of the profits of the Crown Estate property portfolio.
The Crown Estate, which is nominally owned by the monarch but has sent all its profits to the Treasury since 1760, said yesterday it made a record £252.6million in the year to March - an increase of five per cent. It is the second year running that the Queen has enjoyed a big increase in taxpayer funding thanks to the Crown Estate.
Under a deal introduced by Chancellor George Osborne in 2012, the payout started at £31million and rose to £36million in April this year. She was previously paid by taxpayers through the Civil List, an allowance set by Parliament, and other Government grants.
Using £2.3million of additional cash held in a reserve fund, she spent £33.3million of taxpayers' money on official expenditure in her Diamond Jubilee year - £900,000 more than the previous year. The accounts show the Queen gave her staff a small pay rise last year "to improve morale in Diamond Jubilee year" after two years of a wage freeze. She expects to give her staff a similar rise of about one per cent this year but senior aides are still negotiating with union representatives. The accounts show the Queen gave her staff a small pay rise last year "to improve morale in Diamond Jubilee year" after two years of a wage freeze. She expects to give her staff a similar rise of about one per cent this year but senior aides are still negotiating with union representatives. In spite of a busy year of travelling for the Jubilee, the cost of royal travel fell by £500,000 to £4.5million.
Royal aides plan to use the latest windfalls from the Crown Estate to help ease a £40million backlog of repair work to the Queen's homes. Profits were up thanks to overseas interest in its central London properties and investment in wind farms. Its £8.1billion property portfolio includes the UK seabed and Regent Street in London's West End.