Queen Elizabeth’s Household Funds Down To £1 Million, Royal Palaces In Disrepair

Queen Elizabeth’s Household Funds Down To £1 Million, Royal Palaces In Disrepair

STEVEN SWINFORD, THE TELEGRAPH
JAN. 28, 2014, 7:09 AM 43,360 53

The Queen’s household finances were at a “historic low” with just £1 million left in reserve, MPs said on Monday. Her courtiers were advised to take money-saving tips from the Treasury.

A report by the Commons public accounts committee found that the Queen’s advisers were failing to control her finances while the royal palaces were “crumbling”.

MPs said her advisers had overspent to such an extent that her reserve fund had fallen from £35 million in 2001 to just £1 million today.

The Royal household had made efficiency savings of just 5 per cent over the past five years compared with government departments, that are cutting their budgets by up to a third.

MPs on the committee said the Treasury must “get a grip” and help to protect the royal palaces from “further damage and deterioration”.

Margaret Hodge, the Labour chairman of the committee, said: “We believe that the Treasury has a duty to be actively involved in reviewing the household’s financial planning and management — and it has failed to do so.”

Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle are reported to be in urgent need of repair. Staff must catch rain in buckets to protect art and antiquities, while the Queen’s old boilers were contributing to bills of £774,000 a year.

Mrs Hodge said: “The household must get a much firmer grip on how it plans to address its maintenance backlog. It has not even costed the repair works needed to bring the estate back to an acceptable condition. Again, the Treasury has an oversight role here.”

In April 2012 the Sovereign Grant replaced the old way of funding the Royal family through the Civil List and various Government grants.

The Sovereign Grant represents 15 per cent of the net surplus income of the Crown Estate, land holdings that generate money for the Treasury.

A Buckingham Palace spokesman said the sovereign grant had made the Queen’s funding “more transparent and scrutinized” and was resulting in a “more efficient use of public funds”.

He said that repairing the royal palaces was a “significant financial priority”, and that the Royal household had almost doubled its income to £11.6 million since 2007.

The spokesman said: “The move to the Sovereign Grant has created a more transparent and scrutinised system, which enables the Royal household to allocate funding according to priorities. This has resulted in a more efficient use of public funds.”

A Treasury spokesman said: “The new arrangements established by the Sovereign Grant Act have made the royal finances more transparent than ever while providing the long term stability necessary for good planning.”

Queen's advisers wasting money while royal palaces are 'crumbling'

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This post originally appeared at The Telegraph. Copyright 2014. Follow The Telegraph on Twitter.

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22 January 2014 Last updated at 12:56 GMT

Economy tracker: Unemployment

Latest news:

The number of people out of work fell by 167,000 to 2.32 million in the three months to November, according to the Office for National Statistics.

The unemployment rate of the economically active population fell to 7.1%, near to the point at which the Bank of England has said it will consider raising interest rates.

The number of people in work is 30.15 million.

The claimant count - the number of people claiming Jobseeker's Allowance - fell by 24,000 to 1.25 million in November.

Understanding unemployment:

A person is classed as unemployed if not only out of work, but also actively looking for work and available to start work within a fortnight

Unemployment figures are based on a survey carried out by the Office for National Statistics. They show the average number of people unemployed over a three-month period

A new survey is done every month, but comparisons are made between separate three-month periods, not overlapping ones. e.g. April-June v Jan-March, not April-June v March-May

The ONS also publishes the claimant count which shows the number of people receiving Jobseeker's Allowance (JSA) in a particular month. That figure comes from information supplied by the Department for Work and Pensions

The unemployment figure is higher than the claimant count as many jobseekers do not or cannot claim JSA

The two main measures can sometimes move in different directions. A change in benefits rules moving people on to JSA from another benefit, for example, would increase the claimant count without a corresponding increase in unemployment.

Background:

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Unemployment is referred to as a lagging indicator, because businesses will often delay laying people off as long as they can in difficult times.

A few months after the start of the recession in 2008, unemployment started to rise sharply. When the global financial crisis hit, the unemployment rate was a little over 5% or 1.6 million.

Towards the end of 2009, with the UK coming out of its severest recession since the 1950s, it was almost a million higher at 2.5 million, or 8%.

Unemployment peaked at almost 2.7 million at the end of 2011, its highest level for 17 years.

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