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Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is giving up the lease on another Crown Estate property after paying well below market rate for it for over two decades.
The disgraced former prince has asked to end his lease on East Lodge in Berkshire for which he pays £13,000 in annual rent. Homes in the same desirable postcode are rented for up to £7,500 a month, estate agents show.
After Andrew’s eviction from the Windsor mansion Royal Lodge last month over his ties to paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, he kept his lease at East Lodge, which is thought to be for staff.
The Grade II listed thatched cottage sits near Ascot, close to his old controversial £15million mansion Sunning Hill Park that he sold to the son-in-law of Kazakhstan’s president at £3million above the asking price in 2007.
The Duke first took on the East Lodge tenancy in 1998, initially paying £3,500 annually to the Crown Estate and living in it for a stint until 2004, when he moved into Royal Lodge.
The rent increased with inflation to £12,922 by August last year.
The Crown Estate is an independent commercial body whose profits go to the Treasury but is obliged to get the best value for the public.
Andrew’s request to drop the lease follows a Freedom of Information request submission about East Lodge this January. ‘Since then… we have received a request for us to consider an early termination of the lease,’ the Crown Estate told the BBC.
East Lodge is about five miles from Andrew’s old Windsor home, the thirty room mansion Royal Lodge
The lease was signed and renewed again by Andrew in 2020 after he first took on East Lodge in 1998
The lease had been due to end in July 2027.
MPs will now scrutinise royal properties on the Public Accounts Committee, which announced an inquiry later this year.
Chairman Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown said this will ‘aid transparency’ and is ‘part of its overall mission to secure value for money for the taxpayer’.
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