With regards to the Royal Family of Great Britain, how long have they being receiving an allowance, if I may call it that, from the British government, and if so, why can't they pay their own way?

JaneofGaunt

In the United Kingdom, the Crown Estate is a property portfolio owned by the Crown. Despite reports to the contrary, The Crown Estate has never been the private property of the reigning monarch and therefore cannot be sold by him/her, nor do the revenues from it belong to the monarch personally. It is managed by an independent organisation headed by the Crown Estate Commissioners. The surplus revenue from the Estate is paid each year to HM Treasury. The Crown Estate is formally accountable to Parliament, to which it makes an annual report. The Crown Estate is one of the largest property owners in the United Kingdom with a portfolio worth £6 billion, with urban properties valued at £4.6 billion, and rural holdings valued at £971.7 million; and an annual profit of £210.7 million, as at 15 July 2010. The majority of the estate by value is urban, including a large number of properties in central London, but the estate also owns 272,000 acres (110,000 ha) of agricultural land and forest, more than 55% of the UK's foreshore, and retains various other traditional holdings and rights, for example Ascot racecourse and Windsor Great Park. On George III's accession he surrendered the income from the Crown lands to Parliament in return for a fixed civil list payment and the income retained from the Duchy of Lancaster. The king surrendered to parliamentary control the hereditary excise duties, post office revenues, and "the small branches" of hereditary revenue including rents of the Crown lands in England, (which amounted to about £11,000, or £1,602,331 today) and was granted a civil list annuity of £800,000 (equal to £116,533,174 today) for the support of his household and the expenses of civil government, subject to the payment of certain annuities to members of the royal family. Every succeeding sovereign has renewed the arrangement made between George III and parliament and the practice has, since the nineteenth century, been recognised as "an integral part of the Constitution [which] would be difficult to abandon". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_Estate Only the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh receive funding from the Civil List. The Duke receives £359,000 per year. The state duties and staff of other members of the Royal Family are funded from a Parliamentary Annuity, the amount of which is repaid by the Queen from the monies put into the Privy Purse from income from the Duchy of Lancaster. The money repaid by the Queen can be claimed against her personal tax bill however. Money from the Privy Purse also goes towards royal charities, including the Chapel Royal. Private personal expenditure is met from private sources of income. The Treasury has the power to appoint a Civil List Auditor under the Civil List Audit Act 1816 and under section 9 of that Act the Treasury is required to prepare a full and complete code of instructions for the guidance of the conduct of such an auditor. These instructions were most recently issued on 25 September 2005. In late 2010 the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced that from 2013 the Civil List would be abolished and replaced by an all-in-one payment called Sovereign Support Grant, funded entirely from the Crown Estate. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_list#Present_day The question of why The Queen does not pay her own way is, I feel, too inflammatory to include on Ask Funtrivia - perhaps more suited to the Forums. Oct 27 10, 4:24 PM

Baloo55th

To put it more simply, the Crown handed over most of the royal lands (exceptions being the Duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster (Cornwall definitely - fairly sure about Lancaster)} to the nation in exchange for the Civil List payment. Prince Charles gets no Civil List - he's supported by the Duchy of Cornwall. In fact, the nation makes a profit out of this, as the Civil List comes to less than the income value of the Crown Lands. All in all, the monarchy probably is cheaper than a Presidency, especially when the tourist value is taken into consideration. Which is going to bring in the tourists - the Trooping of the Colour or the President driving somewhere? Oct 27 10, 4:39 PM

george48

Very interesting,I had no idea about the Crown Estate and how much money and property was involved. Oct 28 10, 7:47 AM