Tourism helped the royal finances. Is it enough?

A geeky dive into the annual Sovereign Grant report (lots of charts, and a rant about its ugly cover)

By now, most readers of this newsletter know that I love pouring over numbers, tables, and complicated footnotes, so it won’t surprise you to hear how much I enjoyed reading the latest Sovereign Grant report. I’ve got a folder full of previous issues and an Excel document containing carefully annotated sheets and charts.

Before I delve into the data, can I take a moment to complain about the awfulness of that cover? 

For years, it has been an abysmal example of what graphic design should not be. The gold coat of arms could be a shimmering accent to emphasize the royal nature of this financial statement. Instead, the flat and bland burgundy (or maroon) hue chosen as the background colour overwhelms all other elements, reducing that famous coat of arms to a sallow, difficult-to-read yellow blob. And that same hue transforms what should be the focus of the cover – a rather nice photo of King Charles III and Queen Camilla in their coronation garb on the balcony of Buckingham Palace – into a disjointed afterthought that clashes rather than complements the chosen colour scheme.  

That no one has updated this year’s cover design is a bit surprising because the inside of the report has been tweaked to the better. There are new graphics, flow charts, and coloured section headers that add needed organization of the dense report. Yet the cover actually went backward in terms of design as the gold border around the photo in last year’s edition was deleted, thereby giving the impression that the coronation image is floating on a burgundian sea.

Sigh.

Now to the main event: the data. The Sovereign Grant report as well as others released at the same time are packed with so much information that I’ll be delving into the finances of the monarchy over a few posts.

For an explanation of what the Sovereign Grant is and how it’s changed, please see the bottom of this post but here’s a short explanation , for those without subscriptions: The Sovereign Grant Act is designed to fund the official duties of the monarch and maintain the occupied royal palaces.

THE BIG PICTURE

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The Sovereign Grant has been frozen for three years and will remain at 86.3 million pounds for the upcoming 2024-25, according to Sir Michael Stevens, Keeper of the Privy Purse (he’s in charge of the financial management of the Royal Household. That amount really hasn’t changed since before the pandemic. In 2019-20, it was 82.4 million pounds, rising by less than five percent to 86.3 million pounds in 2023-24, or 1.28 pounds per person in the United Kingdom.

While that may seem too much or too little, depending on your opinion of the monarchy and the royal family, that overall total is also a bit deceptive. The total Sovereign Grant includes the cost of the major renovation of Buckingham Palace. That 10-year plan, officially called the Buckingham Palace Reservicing (BPR), started in 2017-18. Since then, 234.2 million pounds have been spent on everything from asbestos removal and replacing dangerously old wiring to installing new energy-efficient heating and accessibility access. 

Strip the annual BPR allotment out of the Sovereign Grant, and the core funding drops to 51.8 million pounds in 2023-24, or 77 pence per Briton (yes, I know that doesn’t include security or some transport costs.)