Queen Elizabeth gets extra funding

OHMYGOSSIP — Queen Elizabeth is to get £5 million extra in funding from The Sovereign Grant, which is awarding her £36.1 million for the financial year 2013 to 2014.

Queen Elizabeth is to get £5 million extra in funding. The British monarch wil receive £36.1 million from The Sovereign Grant for the financial year 2013 to 2014, up from £31 million for the previous year.

The Queen will use the money to fund a number of official royal duties, maintain palaces and pay her staff, a wage bill which reportedly amounts to some £10 million a year.

The Sovereign Grant was devised in 2011 to replace The Civil List and grants-in-aid scheme to make the funding of the monarchy clearer. The coming financial year is the first the grant has come into effect.

The grant is made up of 15 per cent of profits from Crown Estate, which owns property on behalf of the monarch, but calculated two years in arrears. The company showed profits of £240m for 2011 to 2012, leading to the amount of the grant for 2013 to 2014.

A spokeswoman for Buckingham Palace said the cost of the monarchy is going down when inflation is factored into the equation.

They said: “The Sovereign Grant amounts to £36.1m, which is 15 per cent less in real terms than the Royal Household’s expenditure five years ago.

“During the past five years the Royal Household has reduced its expenditure in line with reductions in funding, and key building and conservation works have necessarily been postponed as a result, thereby increasing the maintenance backlog.”

The money from the grant will cover the cost of travel for royal engagements in the UK and official overseas tours, but does not include the cost of security and police protection.