Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor Subletting Was Legal. The Crown Estate Never Counted the Rent.
The £2,000 a month was the figure everyone led with. The landlord never asked how much its tenant collected from its own cottages, and it still hasn't.
Three of the eight cottages at Royal Lodge could be sublet. The main house could not. That was the deal Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor signed in August 2003, when he took a 75-year lease on the 30-room Windsor mansion and agreed to spend £7.5 million doing it up. He paid no rent for the 23 years he lived there, a peppercorn rent in exchange for the renovation money. The rent from Royal Lodge subletting was his to keep.
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor subletting three cottages brought in just over £2,000 a month at its peak, and less for most of his tenancy, when only one cottage was let. For most of the 22-year tenancy, one cottage went to a tenant who worked for the royal family. The rent was below market. From late 2021, for less than a year, all three were let at once, bringing in just over £2,000 a month before maintenance and expenses. The total over two decades is unknown. James Chalmers, the Keeper of the Privy Purse, told MPs he had not seen the underlying documents or the historical records, and the committee said the total cannot be calculated from the information it was given.
The lease ended on 8 October 2026, 23 years into its 75-year term. The Crown Estate assessed the dilapidations at £1.8 million. Andrew was owed £301,967.66 under the early-surrender clause, which paid compensation on a reducing scale during the lease’s first 25 years. The surrender fell inside that window. That is why anything was still due. The net receipt to the Crown Estate was £1,498,032.34. King Charles paid the £1.5 million on his brother’s behalf, the BBC reported.
The committee asked the Crown Estate what it knew about the money. The answer, in the report’s summary, is that the Estate “does not routinely collect or hold information to confirm how much income has been generated from subletting”. Its chief executive, Dan Labbad, told MPs the lease was “a product of its time” and was reluctant to say what the Estate would do differently. The committee concluded that the Estate “did not identify specific lessons from the Royal Lodge lease arrangement”, and the report records that it “gave no assurances that this will change in the future”.
The Crown Estate is not a private landlord. It manages a £14.5 billion portfolio of land, property and seabed, and it is required to achieve the best price in the circumstances when it lets or sells. In 2025-26 it returned £1.4 billion of net profit to the Treasury, £875 million of it from licensing offshore wind farms. The rent from three Windsor cottages is the one stream on its own estate it never priced.
Royal Lodge is not the only lease with the clause. Bagshot Park and Thatched House Lodge, both leased to members of the royal family, contain subletting provisions that let the tenant keep the income from subletting part of the estate, and in some circumstances the whole of it. The committee wrote that it would be normal practice for a landlord to share in the profits of subletting, and that consideration should be given to whether that is possible in future, “particularly if larger sums are involved”.
Ninety-four people commented on the Daily Express’s Facebook post. Most said there was nothing to answer for. “His Lease allowed sub letting, what’s the problem?” wrote Terry Haynes. Andrew Machin put it the same way: “If was allowed , what’s the problem ? As The Crown Estate’s were his landlord .” Chelle D. Avies pointed to the £7.5 million: “He paid £7.5 for the lease which stipulated he could sub-lease the cottages. Why the fury?”
Jack Jones asked the other question. “I thought king Charles was responsible for all of Sandringham Estate, How was Andrew allowed to let these properties and benefit £ 2000 a month from them, Is that a form of punishment,???” The first group is right about the lease and wrong about the question. Nothing in the lease said Andrew could not sublet. Philip Parker, another commenter, wrote exactly that: “There was NOTHING in Andrew Mountbatten Windsor’s lease that said he COULDN’T SUB-LET. So what’s the problem.” The committee never said he broke it. Its recommendation is the answer to Jones’s question: future leases should prohibit subletting unless the landlord agrees, and the landlord should obtain the financial details.
The King paid the £1.5 million his brother owed the Crown Estate, and the King pays the palace rents of Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie from his own private income. The two princesses pay nothing themselves for St James’s Palace and Kensington Palace. The Royal Household’s own valuations for those properties were out of date until March 2026. One had last been valued in 2018, another in 2020. A third had no independent valuation at all. The Household’s treasurer accepted that “the valuation was not up to date”.
Royal Lodge is empty. The Crown Estate has yet to decide what it will be used for. Its October press notice promised a “structured assessment” of the options, covering planning and heritage requirements, sustainability, security and valuation. The committee noted that the Estate set no timeline for it.
