Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor won’t get money back from Royal Lodge

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is unlikely to receive any compensation upon leaving Royal Lodge in Windsor, according to information published by the Public Accounts Committee.

As part of his leasing arrangement, Andrew could have been entitled to £488,000 for an early surrender of his 75-year lease.

But a report from the Crown Estate for MPs on the public spending watchdog says that the property is so dilapidated and in need of repairs that in “all likelihood” Andrew “will not be owed any compensation”.

There will now be an MPs’ inquiry launched into the Crown Estate and its royal leases, says committee chair, Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown.

Sir Geoffrey said the information from the Crown Estate “clearly forms the beginnings of a basis for an inquiry” which will begin next year and will consider the Crown Estate and property leases with the Royal Family.

It is not known yet whether Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor will be called to give evidence.

The information supplied by the Crown Estate also showed Andrew handed in his notice on the property on 30 October, the day it had been announced he had lost his titles.

He gave a year’s notice, so could stay for another 10 months, but it has been expected that he will move from Royal Lodge to Sandringham in Norfolk early next year.

There was also evidence that Andrew still had a lease on part of his former home at Sunninghill Park in Berkshire, with the Crown Estate saying he was still the leaseholder of East Lodge, which has a separate lease from the main house, which Andrew sold in 2007.

The East Lodge was said by the Crown Estate to have been leased by Andrew for a “member of staff”.

MPs on the cross-party committee had wanted to know the details of Andrew’s financial arrangements for Royal Lodge and whether taxpayers’ interests had been properly protected.

Andrew had taken on a 75-year lease of Royal Lodge in 2003, paying over £8.5m up-front to cover renovation costs and paying in advance to remove any requirement for rent, based on a notional rent of £260,000 per year.

There was also a token “peppercorn” payment, which the Crown Estate notes is standard practice for long leases, where there’s an advance payment in lieu of rent.

A clause allowed him to get some of his advance payments back if he left within 25 years, but that depended on the property being maintained.

The report says the current condition of Royal Lodge is “not out of keeping with a tenancy of this duration”, but the cost of repairing “dilapidations” meant any payback was unlikely.

Overall, the terms of the Royal Lodge deal were “fair, reasonable and in line with market practice”, says a letter from the Crown Estate commissioners to MPs.

The spending watchdog also published information about Forest Lodge, the Prince and Princess of Wales’s new home in Windsor, saying it had been taken on a 20-year lease from the Crown Estate.

The couple, who moved in this autumn, are described as paying an “open market rent” using levels agreed by independent valuers.

There had been pressure on Andrew, 65, to move from his Windsor home for over a year, in what had become known as the Siege of Royal Lodge.

King Charles had stopped financial support for his brother, but Andrew had a private lease that he had previously shown no signs of relinquishing.

But following a growing public outcry about his links to the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Andrew was stripped of titles such as the Duke of York and his status as prince, becoming Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.

As part of that announcement in October, Andrew was also to leave Royal Lodge and to move into some other accommodation in Sandringham, the King’s private estate in Norfolk.

Andrew has also faced calls from Democrat members of the US Congress to give evidence to a committee investigating Epstein’s activities.

Mr Mountbatten-Windsor had not replied to the request by the end of their deadline last month.