Royal Cottage Is 'Unfit For Animals' and Costs Taxpayer £484 A Month

It may have royal connections, but Stephen Warr’s rented home is certainly no palace. He describes the damp, dilapidated cottage owned by the Crown Estate as “unfit for animals”. With chunks of plaster hanging from the ceiling, rotting floorboards and mould growing on the walls, it looks more like the inner-city property of a slum landlord. Yet the taxpayer is forking out £484 a month in housing benefit for the former farm worker to live there. The cottage is owned by the vast £8.6 billion Crown Estate, which will earn the Queen around £39 million this year. The estate received £38,539 in housing benefit from West Somerset Council alone last year.  Read more on the Daily Mirror website.

Royal Estates Fail To Meet Targets for Affordable Homes

Two of Britain's largest landowning bodies, which generate millions of pounds a year for the Queen and Prince Charles, are regularly failing to meet affordable housing targets when building new homes on their land. Planning documents reveal that both the Crown Estate and the Duchy of Cornwall are persuading councils to allow them to cut their affordable housing quotas on the grounds that meeting them would be too expensive. An investigation examined the two landowners' plans to build 4,299 homes in 31 schemes. 14 developments failed to meet local targets, resulting in at least 213 fewer affordable homes being built. 10 of the 19 largest Crown Estate developments have not or will not meet affordable housing targets. In its most recent financial results, the Crown Estate said it had "outperformed the market" and achieved a £252.6m surplus, 15% of which goes to the Queen. The rest goes to the Treasury. Read more on the Bureau of Investigative Journalism website.