The Queen has been handed a 20% pay cut, to be followed by a pay freeze until 2015.
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The 85-year-old monarch saw her pay drop from £38.3 million in 2008-2009 to £32.1 million last year and her funding will be held at £30million a year until April 2013.
That works out at a pay squeeze of over 20%. Worse still for Her Majesty’s purse, new rules mean it will stay that way for at least a further two years.
The old Civil List has been replaced with the Sovereign Grant, which gives her 15 per cent of the profits from the Crown Estate – her £7 billion property portfolio which includes Regent Street, Windsor Great Park and more than half the UK’s coastline.
A Treasury briefing document says: “The grant levels envisaged in the early years are, in real terms, below what the Royal Household spent in every one of the last 20 years.”
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge will receive no extra cash from the British taxpayer and instead their costs will be met by Prince Charles.
Repairs at royal palaces are also likely to be hit by the new arrangements.
