Heating turned down at Buckingham Palace to save costs with overall spending up £21m - full breakdown of royal accounts
29 June 2023, 08:19
Heating at Buckingham Palace was turned down to cut costs but spending was still up by £21 million, royal accounts have shown.
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Guests, staff and the royal family were living with temperatures set at 19C during the winter and a few degrees lower when rooms were empty.
Prior to taking his place on the throne, the King had been very vocal on the importance of the environment, tackling climate change and protecting wildlife, and even recycled his Clarence House bathwater.
But Sovereign Grant accounts showed Charles began his reign with royal expenditure rising for the second year running.
Spending increased by five percent to £107 million in the last financial year - with taxpayer funding remaining at £86 million.
The files also showed that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have now vacated Frogmore Cottage in Windsor.
Read more: Kate Garraway receives MBE from Prince William as smiling husband Derek Draper watches on
Sir Michael Stevens, Keeper of the Privy Purse, said the past 12 months had been "a year of grief, change and celebration, the like of which our nation has not witnessed for seven decades".
"These past 12 months have taken us from the Platinum Jubilee in the summer of last year, to the sadness of the death of Queen Elizabeth and the accession of our new sovereign in the autumn, via an incoming and outgoing state visit and many months of work in preparation for the coronation of their majesties King Charles and Queen Camilla in the spring of this year," he added.
There was a mixed picture for expenditure in other areas, with housekeeping and hospitality up from £1.3 million to £2.4 million, and property maintenance falling £6.1 million to £57.8 million.
The Sovereign Grant document reported on the royal household's sustainability efforts, highlighting a number of initiatives including: "A concerted effort to reduce occupied room set points to 19C during the winter, as well as educate staff to turn down the temperature in vacant rooms to 16C and be more aware of the potential for reducing heat loss."
A palace spokesman said: "His majesty has obviously supported the strategic direction of the royal households in its attempts to achieve net zero."
He added: "In the short term though, it is all about reducing our emissions where we can control our emissions and in adjusting room temperatures, whether that's during the working week or whether that's a limiting of the effect of heating on weekends.
"Or whether it's turning off the gas lamps where it's safe to do so, as a precursor to changing them over to electric operation, or indeed if it's the case of turning the heating off on the swimming pool - these are all areas which are about the steps that we can take to reduce our emissions."
Royal accounts breakdown:
Here are some of the key figures from the royal accounts for 2022-2023.
- £86.3 million - The total taxpayer-funded Sovereign Grant, made up of £51.8 million for the "core" funding and an extra £34.5 million for the reservicing of Buckingham Palace.
- £107.5 million - Official net expenditure by the monarchy, a rise of £5.1 million or 5% from £102.4 million in 2021/2022.
- £1.6 million - Amount spent from the Sovereign Grant on the late Queen's funeral.
- £700,000 - Amount spent from the Sovereign Grant on the Platinum Jubilee (including £300,000 from 2022-23).
- £27.1 million - The wage bill for staff, up £3.4 million, or 14%, from £23.7 million the year before.
- £2.4 million - Cost of housekeeping and hospitality for the royal household, up £1.1 million from £1.3 million.
- £3.9 million - Cost of official royal travel, a drop of £0.6 million or about 13%, from £4.5 million the previous year.
- £1.02 million - Cost of 179 helicopter journeys made by members of the royal family.
- £186,571 - Cost of charter flights for the King and Queen to Rwanda for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting.
- £146,219 - Charter flights for the King and Queen's first official state visit, to Germany in March 2023.
- £25,687 - Cost of a residence-to-residence charter flight for the King, when he flew from Aberdeen to Northolt in October 2022.
- £1.29 - Cost per person in the UK of funding the total Sovereign Grant.
- 77p - Cost per person of the "core" part of the Sovereign Grant for official duties, not including funds for the long-term Buckingham Palace works.
- 183,207 - Items of correspondence received by Buckingham Palace in 2022-23 including 67,693 before the Queen's death, and 115,244 afterwards, making it the busiest year on record for incoming post.
- 9.7% - Proportion of staff from ethnic minority backgrounds working for Buckingham Palace, compared with 9.7% in 2021-22 and 8.5% in 2020-21. The target was 10% and is now 14%.
- 16.3% - Proportion of staff from ethnic minority backgrounds working for Kensington Palace. (13.6% last year)
- £5.9 million - Prince of Wales's private income from the Duchy of Cornwall landed estate - for about six months he spent as a new heir to the throne in 2022-23.
- £6.9 million - Amount of money kept by the landed estate for day-to-day running, instead of going to William as salary.
- £12.8 million - Salary the King received as the Prince of Wales from the Duchy.
- £24 million - The total annual Duchy of Cornwall profit for 2022-23, which would ordinarily have been William's full salary.
