It’s the time of year that we’ve all been waiting for… no, just me? Okay whatever. Anyway! Palace officials have released the annual Royal financial report for 2014, and some of the results may surprise you.
Royal spending on travel was up just about £1 million. There were quite a few overseas visits that took place last year, including Prince William, The Duke of Cambridge and The Duchess of Cambridge’s (nee Kate Middleton) trip to New Zealand and Australia (much of which was covered by the countries they visited) and their trip to New York City, Prince William’s solo-trip to China, and Prince Harry’s trip to Belize and Chile.
The most expensive trip, however, was Prince Charles, The Prince of Wales, and Camilla, The Duchess of Cornwall’s trip to Mexico and Columbia, which cost nearly £500 million alone.
The Telegraph broke down some of the stats here:
- £35.7 million: cost of the Monarchy to the taxpayer, the equivalent of 56p for each person in the country.
- £18.7 million: the staff wage bill for the Royal household
- £1.2 million: the cost of the aircraft hangar for the Queen’s helicopter at RAF Odiham, in Hampshire.
- £143 million: the amount raised to support the work of the Prince of Wales’s 15 charities
- 11,000: the number of congratulatory telegrams sent by the Queen in 2014-15 to centenarians on their 100th birthday
- 3,379: the number of letters answered personally by the Prince of Wales in 2014-15
If you take a look at those numbers, the Monarchy costs the British taxpayers less than £1 each, but Prince Charles was able to bring in £143 million for his charities alone. That’s pretty impressive, in my opinion!
In case you’re wondering, Prince Charles pays for Prince William, Kate, and Prince Harry’s official staff and expenses (not to be confused with their personal staff like their housekeeper and the royal nanny), from his private income from The Duchy of Cornwall. You can read more about royal expenses here. Those particular expenses went up about £60,000 – which isn’t that much of a leap when you consider the total expenditure was £4.6 million.
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