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Public funding for the Royal Household has tripled in real terms since 2012, official figures show, with the rise driven largely by repairs and building work at Buckingham Palace.
The Sovereign Grant, which provides state funding for the monarchy, was introduced in 2012 at £31m per year. That has now risen to £132m, data from the House of Commons Library shows, and once inflation has been taken into account, that represents about a threefold increase.
The grant rose 53% in April, from £86.3m to £132.1m. Royal aides say this was because of a Buckingham Palace building project and the grant will come down again, adding that the monarchy represents good value.
Lord Turnbull, a crossbench peer and a former Cabinet Secretary, called the way the grant was calculated, using a calculation based on Crown Estate profits, was "complete and utter nonsense" but said that the budget isn't high compared with other presidential heads of state.
The Sovereign Grant provides funding for the official duties of the monarchy. In the most recent figures, for 2023-24, the biggest items were property maintenance and staff payroll, with smaller amounts for travel and hospitality and housekeeping.
The analysis by the House of Commons Library shows how much the Sovereign Grant has risen over time – using a measure that takes into account inflation, with comparisons using 2023-24 values as a benchmark.
Using that measure, the Sovereign Grant in 2012-13 was worth £41.5m – which rose to almost £100m in 2018-19, to cover renovations in Buckingham Palace, and then rose in 2025-26 to being worth £129.3m, again for work on Buckingham Palace.
A Bank of England inflation calculation also shows the grant's value having trebled since 2012, although Buckingham Palace uses a separate figure which is slightly below a threefold real-terms increase.
Buckingham Palace says the current figures are higher because of a 10-year, £369m project to modernise facilities in the Palace, including cabling, plumbing, wiring and lifts. It's a project that the National Audit Office says has been well-run and delivers "good value for money".
The Palace says it's misleading to compare this year's figures with earlier levels of grants. They say the big increase is due to the element of the grant that pays for Buckingham Palace building works, rather than the "core" grant for other running costs.
"The Sovereign Grant remained virtually flat for five years from 2020, during a period of high inflation. The majority of the increase in this year's Sovereign Grant is to fund the Buckingham Palace Reservicing Programme, which is ensuring that the Palace, a national asset, is accessible and protected from fire and flood," said a Palace spokesperson.
"A temporary increase in the grant across two years was approved to provide the remainder of the funding agreed in 2016 for this reservicing work. It has always been anticipated that the level of the Sovereign Grant will drop once the project is completed," said the spokesperson.
This could mean funding from the public purse reducing after 2027.
The sharp increase over the past decade has been during difficult years for public finances, including periods of austerity and tight controls over budgets.
For example, a report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies showed that public spending on education in England went down by 11% in real terms between 2010-11 and 2023-24, although the IFS says that it is difficult to compare such big multi-billion budgets with changes in relatively smaller amounts such as the Sovereign Grant.
Before the Sovereign Grant was introduced, state funding for the monarchy came through a mix of grants, government department spending and a "civil list" payment.
Figures from the House of Commons Library, going back to 1995, show the pre-Sovereign Grant totals as lower than than they are today – for instance, using 2023-24 values, it was worth £67m in 2000 and £56m in 2005.
