Prince Andrew must not be allowed to receive a potential £558,000 payout for leaving his 30-room mansion on the royal Windsor estate, campaigners and MPs have said.
Andrew, who is facing increased scrutiny over his friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein following the release of Virginia Giuffre’s posthumous memoir, has reportedly agreed to leave the Royal Lodge after days of mounting pressure.
The furore around Andrew’s continued living arrangements at the Grade II-listed property intensified last week when it emerged his lease for the Royal Lodge means he has only paid a ‘peppercorn’ rent for the past two decades, since he moved in in 2004.
Andrew is also reported to be in line for a payout of £558,000 from the Crown Estate if he gives up his lease early, which is due to expire in June 2078.
This latter revelation has sparked anger among campaigners, with a spokesperson for anti-monarchy campaign group Republic telling Yahoo News: “It’s outrageous that Andrew should be given money for moving out of the Royal Lodge. Essentially, he’d be rewarded for being accused of sexual abuse. That’s an insult to his alleged victims, the public and the country… We need the Met to question Andrew. We need a full Royal Epstein Inquiry now.
Prince Andrew pictured with Melania Trump (then Melania Knauss), Gwendolyn Beck, and Jeffrey Epstein at a party at the Mar-a-Lago club on 12 February, 2000. (Getty Images)
“The Crown Estate belongs to the country. It isn’t owned by the royals. Any income from it shouldn’t be given to the monarchy – it should be used to improve our underfunded public services.”
Opposition MPs have been pushing to debate the Andrew scandal in the Commons, including his payment of “peppercorn” rent over the past 20 years.
Lisa Smart, the Liberal Democrats Cabinet Office spokesperson told Yahoo News of the potential payment to Andrew: “By disgracing his office, Prince Andrew has relinquished any rights to special treatment at the expense of the taxpayer. The government needs to provide clarity. Taxpayers deserve to know.
“The first thing we need is proper transparency and accountability – that’s why the Liberal Democrats have already called for the Crown Estate and Prince Andrew to give evidence under oath in Parliament before a select committee.”
Yahoo News has contacted Buckingham Palace, Prince Andrew and the Crown Estate to ask if Andrew would receive a £558,000 payment if he voluntarily quits the property.
According to the Sun, Andrew has said he will only quit his current home if he can move to Frogmore Cottage, the former home of Prince Harry and Meghan that is also on the Windsor Estate.
Prince Andrew with Virginia Roberts (later Virginia Giuffre) in a photo alleged to have been taken in early 2001 at Ghislaine Maxwell’s property. Andrew has cast doubt on the authenticity of the image. (Capital Pictures)
Will Prince Andrew quit the Royal lodge?
The scandal over Andrew’s relationship with convicted paedophile Epstein has never really gone away.
But fresh focus was put back on it in October this year when an email from Andrew to Epstein, sent on 28 February, 2011, was leaked to the media.
“I’m just as concerned for you! Don’t worry about me!,” Andrew said. “It would seem we are in this together and will have to rise above it. Otherwise keep in close touch and we’ll play some more soon!!!!”
News of Andrew sending the message three months after he said he had cut contact with Epstein sparked uproar. It was swiftly followed by the publication of Giuffre’s posthumous memoirs, featuring allegations about Andrew.
Andrew subsequently announced on 18 October that he would give up use of his royal titles.
But embarrassment over the scandal continues to follow the royals. On Monday, King Charles was heckled during a visit to Lichfield Cathedral, with a man shouting at him from the crowd: “How long have you known about Andrew and Epstein?”
The Telegraph reports that Andrew is now in “advanced talks” with the King’s representatives over leaving the Royal Lodge, with pressure being piled on the prince to leave voluntarily. While Andrew’s initial response was to “dig his heels in”, the paper says there is “a growing sense of inevitability that he will now move out”.
Activists from the anti-monarchy group Republic stage a protest at the gates to Royal Lodge. (Getty Images)
Andrew stepped away from public duties in 2019 as more and more details of his friendship with Epstein began to emerge.
He later settled a civil sexual assault case with Virginia Giuffre, who was trafficked by Epstein as a teenager and who Andrew has said he never met. Andrew has always vehemently denied any wrongdoing.
Where does Andrew get his money from?
Andrew’s only publicly declared stream of income is a pension he receives from his time in the Royal Navy between 1979 and 2001, according to the Guardian.
This annual sum has been quoted in the media at £20,000 a year, but historian Andrew Lownie, author of “Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York”, told Yahoo News it will likely be higher as it will have gone up with inflation.
The last published figure on the amount of public money Andrew received as a working royal was £249,000 per year in 2010, according to The Guardian.
After that, his mother Queen Elizabeth II was understood to have paid him money from her own private wealth while he carried out royal engagements.
Before the Royal Lodge, Andrew lived at Sunninghill Park near Ascot after it was gifted to him by Queen Elizabeth II. In 2007, he sold the property to buyers from Kazakhstan for £15m.
Andrew hosting a Pitch@Palace event at Buckingham Palace. (Alamy)
According to a 2024 book by royal writer Robert Hardman, King Charles cut Andrew’s £1m annual “living allowance” in November 2024 after he reportedly refused to move out of the Royal Lodge.
Hardman also wrote that Andrew claimed to have found other sources of income related to his contacts in international trade. Andrew was the UK special representative for international trade and investment between 2001 and 2011.
Elsewhere, Andrew set up his Pitch@ Palace business initiative in 2014 to help entrepreneurs and startup businesses.
Lownie told Yahoo News last year that Andrew also has “trust funds inherited from the members of the family, so he will be well catered for by several generations of the Royal Family”.
Andrew’s civil lawsuit with Giuffre in 2022 cost him a reported £12m to settle. On how he could afford this, Lownie said: “We don’t know. He had money from selling his house in Sunninghill for £15m [in 2017] and a chalet in Switzerland. There’s some suggestion the Queen helped him… but we don’t really know.
What is the Crown estate?
The Crown Estate is a vast portfolio of land and property that owned by the Monarch “in right of the Crown”.
This means that while the King owns the estate during his reign, it is not his private property and he does not manage or make decisions about its assets.
This dates back to 1760 when George III surrendered the management of Crown Lands to Parliament for a fixed annual payment.
A view of Virginia Water Lake, Part of Windsor Great Park and the Crown Estate. (Alamy)
The Crown Estate describes itself as an independent and commercial organisation, whose profit is delivered to the Treasury, who then decide the annual payment to the King in the form of the Sovereign Grant.
It is one of the largest property managers in the UK, with a £13bn investment portfolio including renewable energy projects, regeneration schemes, real estate and more than 200,000 acres of rural land, according to its latest annual report.
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