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Have you ever wondered how much the king gets paid
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Well, it's safe to say it's a fair bit more than the average Brit
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In fact, King Charles and the royal family are in line for a bumper 45 million pound pay rise
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a 50% increase on last year's packet thanks to sky high profit booked by the Crown Estate
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So what actually is the Crown Estate and how does it make its money
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The Crown Estate is one of the country's largest landowners responsible for over 180
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thousand acres of farmland and property across Britain and Wales. It was originally the
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estate of the British monarch until in the 18th century George III surrendered
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control of the organisation to the government. But as part of the accord the
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Treasury agreed to siphon off a proportion of its profits to fund the monarch and by
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extension much of the royal family. The rest, meanwhile, goes to the exchequer to
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help pay for public services. The estate's portfolio consists of agriculture land, the freehold on city properties, including all of Regent Street and half of St James's
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and crucially, all of the seabeds that surrounds the United Kingdom. And it was the seabed and its ability to give out licenses for offshore wind farms that helped it to record profits this year which more than doubled to over a billion pounds A couple of big changes were proposed to the Crown Estate in the recent King speech
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but what exactly do those changes involve? First, the government wants to give the estate powers to borrow money
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This, Labour hopes, will boost the offshore sector by making capital easier to come by
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And the second involves freeing up its ability to invest with that capital
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which, if the money is shrewdly invested, could help to drive growth in the UK's green energy sector
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But if it is not, the taxpayer and King Charles himself could be left a little out of pocket
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And there's already a new deal in place between the Crown Estate and GB Energy
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to help speed up the development of offshore wind farms. The government's new state-owned energy company, which is due to be set up in a few months' time
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will help inject money into the Crown Estate's upcoming project, to help ensure they get the funding they need
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The estate believes that the partnership would help achieve its target to lease out enough seabed by 2030 to power 20 million homes
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which, the government claim, would help bring down bills, reduce our carbon emissions and secure our energy security
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Here at City AM, we'd like to know, do you support the Crown Estate being able to borrow money
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and invest in new projects? Let us know in the comments
