Princess Beatrice and Eugenie don’t pay for palace homes with King footing bill

Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie personally pay nothing for accommodation inside royal palaces – with the King footing the bill, it has been revealed.

It was understood that the daughters of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor paid market rent for their London homes, with Beatrice having an apartment in St James’ Palace and Eugenie having a cottage within the Kensington Palace grounds.

But a new investigation by the National Audit Office has shown that the sisters, who are non-working royals, do not pay anything with the cost being picked up by the Privy Purse – the King’s private income from the Duchy of Lancaster.

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A report by the National Audit Office, which was instructed to look at the Royal Family and its property arrangements, shows that property rented out by the Royal Household in occupied royal palaces is adjusted to typically 60 per cent of open market value for non-working members of the Royal Family.

It is claimed this is due to the accommodation being within a security cordon, limiting only those with vetting and security clearance to reside there. However, the NAO found that for a number of years, the York sisters’ adjusted rents were based on out-of-date open market valuations.

Up until this year, Eugenie’s rent of Ivy Cottage in Kensington Palace was based on a 2018 valuation and Beatrice’s apartment in St James’s Palace on a 2020 valuation.

Eugenie’s rent was 50% of the 2018 open market value from 2020 to 2021, and ranged from 55% in 2022 to 63% in 2025, while rent on Beatrice’s was 60% of the 2020 market value from 2020-2021 and ranged from 62% to 68% between 2022-2025, the NAO said.

The current rental rates are now 64% of a 2026 open market valuation for Eugenie, and 68% of a 2026 valuation for Beatrice. No details of how much he the King pays for Eugenie and Beatrice’s rent were released by the NAO, with the watchdog saying the amounts were private.

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It is understood the arrangement for the Privy Purse to pay the York sister’s rent was put in place by the late Queen with Eugenie paying herself for renovations to her cottage at Kensington Palace.

Former Liberal Democrat minister and expert on royal finances, Norman Baker, said: “There’s no way that non-working members of the royal family should be subsidised by the Duchy of Lancaster. The royal family is yet again taking the public for a complete ride.”

He added: “Andrew’s daughters Eugenie and Beatrice have been benefiting from hugely generous sweetheart deals for their accommodation, paid for out of Duchy of Lancaster money. And that means that less profit has been passed to the Treasury from the Duchy than should have been.”

The King’s nieces Eugenie, 36, and Beatrice, 37, are non-working royals who both have jobs with Beatrice Vice President of Strategic Partnerships at the software firm Afiniti, and Eugenie, a director at Mayfair art gallery, Hauser and Wirth.

Beatrice, who is mum to daughters Sienna and Athena, is married to millionnaire property developer Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi and they also have a luxury home together in the Cotswolds, said to be worth £3.5million.

While Eugenie, who is pregnant with her third child, tied the knot with husband Jack Brooksbank in a huge ceremony at St George’s Chapel in Windsor in 2018.

Mr Brooksbank, who previously worked for George Clooney’s tequila brand Casamigos, is now said to work in sales for a luxury development in Portugal, meaning the couple and their children split their time between there and London.

The princesses faced scrutiny earlier this year when their names appeared in the recent Jeffrey Epstein files, with one email exchange suggesting their mother Sarah Ferguson took them to see the convicted paedophile in the US days after he was released from prison for child sex crimes.

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Meanwhile, it has also emerged that Beatrice and Eugenie’s father, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was able to rake in cash by sub-letting three cottages in the grounds of Royal Lodge – despite paying just a peppercorn rent for his former home, it has emerged.

The disgraced former Duke of York’s lease for his previous 99-acre Windsor estate allowed him to rent out three of the eight buildings that were within the grounds in a private deal between him and the subletters – and pocket the income himself.

The deal has been shrouded in mystery as there is no clarification on how much money the ex-prince made through subletting or how long they were sublet out for. A royal source claimed Andrew was subletting the cottages to staff at a rate to cover maintenance costs for the Royal Lodge estate.

Pictures taken of the Windsor mansion in the months before he was forced out to live in a smaller Sandringham home showed the property crumbling – with paint peeling from walls and cracks in the brickwork.

It is understood Mountbatten-Windsor will not be entitled to compensation worth between £300,000 and £400,000 from the Crown Estate for giving up the Royal Lodge lease early due to the dilapidation costs that need to be paid.

The report also reveals that other non-working royals, Prince and Princess Michael of Kent also have their Kensington Palace apartment rent paid for by the King.

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The late Queen’s cousin and his wife Marie-Christine, were dubbed the “Rent-a-Kents” and sparked a scandal when it emerged in 2002 that they paid a peppercorn rent of just £69 a week to live in the grand Apartment 10, maintained by the taxpayer, despite not being working royals.

MPs on the Commons’ Public Accounts Committee demanded they pay full rent, but the couple argued that Queen Elizabeth II had given them the use of the Palace as a wedding present.

The late Queen came to the rescue, offering to pay a commercial rate rent of £120,000 a year on their behalf, until they had to find the sum themselves from 2009. But the new NAO report revealed, in contrast, that their rent is now paid by the King from the Privy Purse. It is understood the late Queen agreed to continue to pay for her relatives after 2009 with the King continuing to honour his mother’s commitment.

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In other findings, the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh were shown to pay a peppercorn rent after signing a long lease of 150 years in 2007 for Bagshot Park in Surrey with a payment of £5 million, and Edward’s company, Eclipse Nominees Limited listed as the leaseholder.

Edward and Sophie, like Andrew, are also entitled to sublet on the estate, and generated a private income after renting out the stable complex at Bagshot Park to a third party up to 2020. The NAO report, which did not assess value for money, will form the basis of the Public Accounts Committee’s inquiry into royal properties.

The NAO found that rent and lease arrangements for the royals differed depending on why the accommodation was required and whether the property was managed by the Crown Estate or the Royal Household.

A Buckingham Palace spokesperson said: “We are grateful to the National Audit Office for this report, which is in line with The Royal Household’s commitment to transparency. We hope that the findings will help correct, clarify or contextualise a number of points regarding Royal properties.

“As the report notes, arrangements for properties managed by the Royal Household vary based on a number of factors to ensure residences are filled appropriately, depending on their location, tenants and purpose.”

While a spokesperson for The Crown Estate, said: “The Crown Estate welcomes the National Audit Office’s review which confirms its leases with members of the Royal Family were agreed in line with independent, professional advice and open market valuations. We look forward to discussing the report further with the Public Accounts Committee in due course.”

But Mr Baker, author of the book Royal Mint, National Debt, says further transparency is needed into royal funding – and a full probe should be launched.

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He said: “We need a full open inquiry by parliament’s Public Accounts Committee into all aspects of royal funding, and we need it now. Support for a republic has been growing fast, especially among young people. If the monarchy wants to survive, it had better start reforming itself pretty quickly.”