Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in Please refresh your browser to be logged in Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Membership today. Disgraced former prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor received more than £2,000 a month from renting out cottages on his Royal Lodge estate , a report has revealed. The Public Accounts Committee report, published on Friday, showed that the former duke of York sublet one cottage at below market rate to an in-situ tenant who worked for the royal family, for most of the 22-year tenancy. From late 2021, for an undisclosed period of less than a year, Andrew sublet three cottages in total, while paying a peppercorn rent. Those generated a combined income, before maintenance and expenses, of just over £2,000 a month. The rent figures were said to be reflective of a percentage of salary and below market rates. The details were revealed in a letter from James Chalmers, the Keeper of the Privy Purse and Treasurer to the King, to the PAC. The information was obtained from “the Household of Mr Mountbatten-Windsor” and shared “in the interests of transparency and openness”. “This is with the agreement of Mr Mountbatten-Windsor,” the letter, dated 7 September 2026, read. It added: “While you kindly suggested at the hearing that you would be willing to treat this information in confidence, I can confirm that Mr Mountbatten-Windsor is content for it to be in the public domain.” However, the total sub-letting income amount received by the former prince over the past two decades was not divulged and cannot be calculated accurately from the information. Mr Chalmers wrote that he had “not had access to the underlying documentation or historical records” but shared his understanding on the matter. Andrew was ousted from Royal Lodge in February following revelations about his friendship with convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein . He now lives on the Sandringham estate in Norfolk . A cross-party committee of MPs said that a ban on sub-letting should now become standard practice at the Crown Estate . The committee concluded that the Crown Estate “did not identify specific lessons from the Royal Lodge lease arrangement”. It described the Estate as “reluctant to discuss specifics on how it is applying lessons learned from this process or discuss what they will do differently in the future, due to the Royal Lodge lease being a product of its time”. The recommendations did not completely rule out sub-letting of Crown Estate properties in the future. But the committee said a standard provision in leases should prohibit it, unless the landlord, the Crown Estate, agrees. “We recommend that for all future leases the Crown Estate adopt a normal commercial practice to sub-letting,” the report said. “There should be a standard provision in leases that prohibits sub-letting, unless the landlord’s prior permission is obtained. “That permission should not be unreasonably withheld, and we would expect the Crown Estate to obtain relevant financial details.” The future use of Royal Lodge has yet to be decided, but the PAC said the Crown Estate will “need to consider the lessons learned to inform future use and leasing arrangements for Royal Lodge”. The committee also turned its attention to the Royal Household. It called for a consistent policy for setting rent in its residential properties, after Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie had adjusted rents, paid for by the King, based on out-of-date open market valuations for a number of years. Up until this year, Eugenie’s rent of Ivy Cottage at Kensington Palace was based on a 2018 valuation. Beatrice’s apartment in St James’s Palace was based on a 2020 valuation. The current rental rates are now 64 per cent of a 2026 open market valuation for Eugenie, and 68 per cent of a 2026 valuation for Beatrice. The Crown Estate is an independent £17 billion property, land an
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