Princess's £250k flat refit... on taxpayers (Beatrice)

[gec]

Article all about the Royal family's burden on the taxpayer, with a particular swipe at Princess Beatrice.

Her apartment upgrade, footed buy the taxpayer gets considerable attention.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/royals/2507649/Revealed-How-Royals-blew-our-cash.html

[Orchid]

The TaxPayers’ Alliance also condemned Bea’s bill. Campaign manager Susie Squire said: “It’s staggering.

“Many taxpayers will find this unjustifiable, not least because Beatrice does not carry out official engagements.”

Precisely.

“This puts the rows about MPs’ expenses and duck houses in perspective. This bill eclipses any put in by MPs in their expenses.

“The level of scrutiny being given to MPs expenses should apply to Royal spending.”

Too true. This Country is a soft touch in many areas and the excess expenses for Royals is no different. If an MP had claimed this much for renovating a second home there would be wide spread scandal, so why not with a non-working royal?

Charles also took the most expensive journey by Royal Train — racking up a £26,762 bill for a trip to Yorkshire last November

Furthermore, it's expenses like this which are unjustifiable! Why can't Prince Charles use a commercial train to Yorkshire. Even if he travelled first class it's going to run into the hundreds rather than the tens of thousands. It's expenses gone mad and we (the British public) only have ourselves to blame for not taking the initiative and lobbying against such unnecessary excess. Constant abuse of expenses like this will prompt the  call for a Republic more and more. They need to nip it in the bud, and by "they" I mean the government!

[Orchid]

Apologies for the double post. I've just come across this artcile.
Palace officials spent £300,000 on decorating an apartment in St James's Palace for Princess Beatrice to use as her student digs.

The 20-year-old has just completed her first year of a BA in History and History of Ideas at Goldsmiths College, London. She has been living in Apartment No 2 at the royal residence, next door to her cousins William and Harry at Clarence House.

At the time she moved in, it was suggested that the Duke of York's daughter chose not to take up a place at one of the college's £88-a-week halls of residence or rent her own flat because of the increased cost of security it would entail.

But the taxpayer has had to fork out for major renovations to the four-bedroom apartment, which was previously occupied by a senior royal official

Daily Mail: Palace Officials Spent £300,000 on Beatrice's Student Digs

[wheet]

http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/49846,news,royals-face-backlash-over-beatrice-flat

[Jenee]

Telegraph: Palace officials spent £250,000 renovating Princess Beatrice apartment

People have this image of what a palace apartment looks like but the reality is very different. It is a small set of attic rooms reached only by a spiral staircase of 60 steps.

They've obviously never been to MY apartment complex, which, I'm sure didn't cost even half of £250,000 to build, let alone renovate!  Please don't give me some sob story about how hard-up the royals are

[Orchid]

  ...£250,000-£300,000 to renovate. It's shocking. Did they rival Saddam Hussein's former palace while the rest of the country was in conflict and poverty and plate every surface with gold or something

I pick up the broadsheets everyday and read new articles on the ever declining British economy, on the recession, the struggling banks and hence the struggling home buyers. I read about homelessness, the NHS struggling and it's employees on below par wages. I read about the poor state education system and the badly needed investments for the country's infrastructure. The list goes on. Yet, in spite of ALL this the Queen is still pursuing a hike to her already hefty civil list for the upkeep of surplus palaces she REALLY DOESN'T NEED. And St James’s Palace are now spending hundreds of thousands of tax payer funded pounds on the renovation of an apartment for the non-working royal, Beatrice, to use as her "student digs". I've never before questioned the role of the monarchy so deeply as I have begun to over the past year. I've always considered it a wonderful tribute to British tradition and history. But the more I learn about it's funding and it's cost, the more I begin to form the opinion that it ISN'T “value for money” and that the funds plugged into sustaining this ONE family could be far better utilised elsewhere.

[Miss Scarlett]

Perhaps that's how she's lost all that weight then, climbing up and down 60 steps each day?

'We used money from the Government to undertake a basic programme of refurbishment and any extra requirements that were more personal to Princess Beatrice herself were paid by the Duke of York or the Queen.'

Also, why shouldn't the gov't pay to have the rooms refurbished with an updated kitchen and bath?  Remember those atrocious bathrooms that Buck Palace had, and it took a sheikh or something complaining so profusely to have them refurbished?  There was an outcry about "ungrateful" etc, but in reality those rooms had not been touched in almost 50 years.  I'm sure the same is true for these apartments, and I'm sure they sorely needed to be updated.

Anything extra that Bea wanted that was not justifiable at the gov't expense was paid for by Prince Andrew or the Queen.  That probably means anything Bea would be allowed to take with her.  

The cash was spent rewiring the rooms, plus installing a new kitchen, two new bathrooms and a wood floor in two reception rooms.

Rewiring is ESSENTIAL so that the whole building doesn't catch fire and burn down, and the updated kitchen/bath/floors/etc will benefit all tenants in the years to come and increase the value of the building.  Renovations of that extent ARE expensive --and GBP250k+ seems to be on the mark for all that.

People tend to overlook the details.  

Also, the media are complete sensationalists --the RF costs the taxpayer NOTHING.

Meanwhile Buckingham Palace accounts showed the Queen and Royal Family cost the taxpayer 69p per person last year — an increase of 3p, The total cost of keeping the monarchy rose by £1.5million to £41.5million in the 2008-09 financial year.

The Queen dipped into a reserve fund to boost her Civil List by £6million — the highest amount ever drawn from the fund.

No one pays a single pence for the RF --it all comes from the Crown Estate funds.  If the media get this wrong on such a consistent basis, what else do they get wrong?

[Jenee]

Rewiring is ESSENTIAL so that the whole building doesn't catch fire and burn down, and the updated kitchen/bath/floors/etc will benefit all tenants in the years to come and increase the value of the building.  Renovations of that extent ARE expensive --and GBP250k+ seems to be on the mark for all that.

I disagree. As someone who gutted a 90 year old cottage a few years ago, I can tell you for a fact that it can be done much more cheaply then that! As someone who doesn't work, and therefore makes no worthwhile contribution to society, I think it was pretty presumptuous of Beatrice to request such costly and extravagant upgrades!

[Hattie]

I'm afraid you misinterpret the Crown Estates - not surprising, as the Palace mutters the same argument now and again. The money from the Crown Estates wasn't just to be used to buy nice clothes or wallpaper for the monarch - it was to fund the governance of the country, excepting only the military. If the Queen wants to pay for the NHS, the Civil Service, Parliament, etc. with the revenues and keep any left over after those bills, then sure, she can have it back! There wasn't such a thing as a regular income tax previously; the government levied taxes as and when required on an ad hoc basis and on imports and exports. To argue that the Crown Estates defrays the monarchy's expenses is therefore incorrect, really, because those estates were always meant to be used to run the State, and every penny spent on the Civil List is a deduction from the balance handed over to the Treaury. It also ignores the fact that the Civil List is a very small part of the overall cost of the monarchy, because they can claim for costs on all sorts of things (Diana had a dress allowance from the Foreign Office, as one example) and the cost of transport and protection runs to an enormous sum, as does maintenance of the official (as opposed to private) residences. The actual cost of our monarchy is estimated at somewhere between 100 and 200 million, making it far and away the most expensive in Europe. (Should add that that figure is in the standard Constitutional Law textbooks on the reading lists of every law student in the country; it's not an obscure or extremist guess.)

As to costs - when we bought our home we had it rewired, a new boiler put in, a new kitchen, bathroom, and carpet and had it papered and redecorated throughout. We also had a couple of ugly modern windows replaced with wooden sashes and a hand made wooden door, in keeping with the age of the house, installed. All essential work, and it came in at about £35,000 in total. Our house is a small Victorian terrace, admittedly, and you'd expect the Palace to spend more on a Listed building - but they also have carpenters, plumbers, electricians etc. on permanent staff, and that's a very large part of the costs. Even if you accept that they needed to spend three times what we did, which to be blunt I don't accept at all, that's still only £105,000. How they justify spending nine times that amount, I really can't fathom. The average cost of a house in this country is about half what the renovations at this apartment were - and why did the taxpayer have to fund them, in one of the worst economic situations in history? We have people with families losing their jobs, and therefore also their homes, and we are paying £300,000 to house a student? Why couldn't she use a suite of rooms at Buckingham Palace around the corner; her father's, for example? Conspicuous consumption in an economic meltdown is in poor taste in a head of state, but to expect us to pick up the bill as well is pretty obnoxious.