Prince Andrew hasn’t paid rent for his Grade II listed, 30-room Windsor home in 22 years, a report revealed.
A copy of the disgraced royal’s lease shows that he paid ‘one peppercorn (if demanded)’ of rent per year since 2003.
The rent for the Royal Lodge is about £260,000 a year, but Andrew is considered to have paid it up front for funding renovation work.
The lease, obtained by The Times, also shows that the prince paid £1 million for the lease plus at least £7.5 million for refurbishments in 2005.
Sign up for all of the latest stories
Start your day informed with Metro’s News Updates newsletter or get Breaking News alerts the moment it happens.
He and his family are set to live in the mansion until 2078.
Under the agreement, the Crown Estate would have to pay around half a million pounds if he were to leave the mansion before this.
The estate, which oversees the royal family’s massive land and property holdings, cannot sell the lavish home either.
An National Audit Office report dated 2005 said that the estate would have paid for the Royal Lodge’s refurbishment had the prince not intervened.
The Royal Lodge is now held on a peppercorn rent – a symbolic or very small rent payment – and a value ‘nil’ was recorded in the NAO report.
Yet how Andrew affords to live in the home has been questioned by campaigners after King Charles cut off financial support for him last year.
A look at Royal Lodge in Windsor
Royal Lodge is a Grade II listed building in Windsor that houses 30 rooms, including seven bedrooms.
The lavish mansion is made up of a central section standing at three storeys tall, with two-storey wings.
The current building structure dates back to the 19th century and was later expanded in the 1930s by the then Duke of York, also the future King George VI.
The residence was previously occupied by Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother from 1952 until she died in 2002, aged 101.
Royal Lodge then became home to Prince Andrew and his family in 2004.
Charles removed Andrew’s £1million annual allowance, leaving his only declared income as a £20,000 naval pension – not nearly enough to pay for his estimated £3million security bill.
Andrew, who last week surrendered the use of his title, the Duke of York, amid scrutiny for his ties with Jeffrey Epstein, is understood to have received no inheritance from the late Queen Elizabeth.
His net worth is an estimated $5,000,000 – or just under £3,800,000 – made from investments with China, according to monitoring websites.
Andrew giving up his title capped off six years of controversy for the prince following his calamitous BBC Newsnight interview about Epstein.
In a statement on Friday, Andrew said that following a ‘discussion’ with his elder brother, Charles, he would ‘no longer use my title or the honours which have been conferred upon me. As I have said previously, I vigorously deny the accusations against me’.
Virginia Giuffre would have viewed Andrew giving up his titles ‘as a victory’, the ghostwriter of her posthumous memoir told BBC Newsnight.
The book, Nobody’s Girl, co-written by Amy Wallace, described Virginia’s encounters with convicted sex offender Epstein.
Wallace said the ‘symbolic gesture’ was a ‘step in the right direction’.
She added: ‘I can speak for Virginia; I know that she would view it as a victory that he was forced, by whatever means, to voluntarily give them up.’
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.
