12/31/2023 0 Comments Zoom pricing for charities![]() A Duchy of Lancaster spokesperson indicated that, following his mother’s death, the king endorsed the continuation of a policy of using bona vacantia money on “the restoration and repair of qualifying buildings in order to protect and preserve them for future generations”. Some of their surviving friends were aghast to learn their assets were being used to renovate the king’s properties, calling the practice “disgusting”, “shocking” and “not ethical”.īuckingham Palace declined to comment. Several had been living in rundown properties or social housing that contrast with the high-end duchy properties being transformed with the money they left behind. The Guardian identified dozens of people whose money has been transferred to the king’s hereditary estate after they died in the north-west in places such as Preston, Manchester, Burnley, Blackburn, Liverpool, Ulverston and Oldham. The Duchy of Lancaster came under Charles’s ownership after the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II. Earlier this year, in his first annual payout since inheriting the estate from his mother, Charles received £26m from the Duchy of Lancaster. The practice is helping make rental properties more profitable, which indirectly benefits the king, who receives tens of millions in duchy profits each year – income that Buckingham Palace says is “private”. The diversion of bona vacantia funds in this way has proven a financial boon to the king’s estate. One said duchy insiders regarded the bona vacantia expenditure, which has until now not been publicly disclosed, as akin to “free money” and a “slush fund”. Three sources familiar with the duchy’s expenditure confirmed the estate was using revenues collected from dead citizens to refurbish its profitable property portfolio, making considerable savings for the estate. Another upgrade is helping turn a farm building into commercial offices. One document references the renovation of an old farmhouse in Yorkshire, helping transform it into a high-end residential let. Upgrades include new roofs, double-glazing windows, boiler installations and replacements of doors and lintels. Properties identified in other leaked documents as eligible for use of the funds include town houses, holiday lets, rural cottages, agricultural buildings, a former petrol station and barns, including one used to facilitate pheasant and partridge shoots in Yorkshire. Codenamed “SA9”, the policy acknowledges spending the money in this way could result in an “incidental” benefit to the privy purse, the king’s personal income. Today, the area comprises Lancashire and parts of Merseyside, Greater Manchester, Cheshire and Cumbria.Ī leaked internal duchy policy from 2020 gave officials at the king’s estate licence to use bona vacantia funds on a broad array of its profit-generating portfolio. The duchy essentially inherits bona vacantia funds from people whose last known address was in a territory that in the middle ages was known as Lancashire county palatine and ruled by a duke. Internal duchy documents seen by the Guardian reveal how funds are secretly being used to finance the renovation of properties that are owned by the king and rented out for profit. However, only a small percentage of these revenues is being given to charity.
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