Buckingham Palace turns heating down

The heating has been turned down at Buckingham Palace and other royal homes to cut emissions, reflecting the King's green credentials, royal accounts have shown.

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.

Charles spoke extensively before becoming King about the importance of the environment, tackling climate change and protecting wildlife, and even recycled his Clarence House bathwater and runs his Aston Martin on sustainable fuel.

Sovereign Grant accounts show Charles has begun his reign with royal expenditure, funded by the taxpayer, rising for the second year running.

The figure for net expenditure increased by £5.1 million, or 5%, to £107.5 million for 2022-23, which royal aides said was due to the change of monarchs, inflation and the continued costs of Buckingham Palace's reservicing programme, a 10-year project to update the electrical cabling, plumbing and heating.

The Sovereign Grant remained unchanged at £86.3 million during 2022/23.

A core element of £51.8 million funds the King's official duties and his household - equivalent to 77p per person in the UK - and an additional £34.5 million pays for ongoing reservicing costs for the palace.

The royal household has failed again to meet its diversity target, set in 2021, of drawing 10% of its workforce from ethnic minorities, with the 2023 figure of 9.7% the same as last year.

Payroll costs was one of the biggest annual increases of any expenditure during 2022-23, rising £3.4 million to 27.1 million, with staff given a pay rise of about 5%-6%, and the workforce increased to pre-pandemic levels as royal activities picked up after the lockdowns.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex's vacation of Frogmore Cottage was officially confirmed by a Buckingham Palace spokesman, but they would not speculate on the next tenant, with reports claiming the disgraced Duke of York is resisting a downsizing move from his Royal Lodge home to Harry and Meghan's former home.

Royal travel costs were down by £600,000 to £3.9 million, with helicopter flights - 179 journeys - topping £1 million.

The most expensive travel was Charles and Camilla's visit to Rwanda in June last year, and a separate staff planning visit, to attend a Commonwealth leaders' summit, costing £186,571.

'A year of grief, change and celebration'

Keeper of the Privy Purse, Sir Michael Stevens, 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".

He added: "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."

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."

The report showed £1.6 million was spent on the Queen's funeral and events around the ceremony, which included paying for engagements at Buckingham Palace and staff costs and travel, said a palace spokesman.

A further £700,000 was spent by the royal household on the Platinum Jubilee.

The Queen's former private secretary, Lord Young, who stayed on as joint principal private secretary to the King to help the transition from one monarch to another, received a compensation payment of £145,000-£150,000, on top of his £200,000 - £205,000 salary, after stepping down in May.

The King and Queen plan to use the late Queen's private apartments at Buckingham Palace when refurbishment works are completed there, a Palace official said.

"It is currently the intention that their majesties will occupy the private apartments of her late majesty at the end of the re-servicing programme. And at this point, I'm not in a position to speculate on the future of Clarence House," he said.

Work is still to be undertaken on the Palace's North Wing, and with a timescale of 18 months needed to "decant" this part of the palace, with 70,000 objects having to be moved to a temporary home.

This will be followed by two years of construction on the North Wing, with the full building work project expected to be finished in 2027.

Separate financial information relating to the Prince of Wales was also released, showing William received a private income of nearly £6 million from the Duchy of Cornwall, but was criticised for not publishing an annual report in his first year as heir to the throne.

Charles 'concerned about cost of living crisis'

Graham Smith, chief executive of Republic, which campaigns for an elected head of state, criticised the rise in royal expenditure as the country experienced a cost-of-living crisis.

He said: "Charles has suggested he's concerned about, and aware of, the cost-of-living crisis and yet he seems completely oblivious to his need to reduce costs and they continue to go up and up, whilst public services are being squeezed.

"Really they should be slashing the budget by tens of millions of pounds, not increasing it by £5 million."

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