The Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor Royal Lodge deal has been made public for the first time amid his and Sarah Ferguson’s preparations to leave the Windsor estate.
Andrew provided the required minimum 12-month notice to vacate the property on October 30.
The 25-page document on Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee delves into the details of Andrew’s lease. The file, dated August 8, 2003, includes who the agreement is with, how long it lasts and to whom the lease contract was passed.
The document was signed “between Her Excellency the Queen (1), the Crown Estates Commission (2) [and] “HRH The Duke of York (Andrew’s previous title before he was officially stripped of it in October).”
The 75-year agreement began on June 16, 2003 and was due to expire on June 15, 2078, until King Charles intervened.
If the lease had been bypassed, it would have been passed to an “acceptable assignee”: “the widow of His Royal Highness the Duke of York, or Princess Beatrice, or Princess Eugenie, or the trustees of a trust which has no beneficiaries other than Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie or either of them.”
The lease spells out details about the “tenant’s right to resign,” stating: “If at any time during the term the tenant wishes to resign from this lease, the tenant must give notice to the landlord.”
The lengthy document comes as Ferguson is looking for a new home as Andrew prepares to leave Royal Lodge without receiving any financial settlement.
The Crown Estate told MPs that repairs needed at the 30-bedroom property will almost certainly wipe out any money owed to the former tenant.
Without the need to carry out end of tenancy work, Andrew would have been owed £488,342.21 when leaving the residence on 30 October 2026.
However, the property agency’s preliminary opinion indicates that the cost of rectifying the deterioration will effectively cancel out this potential payment if you give up the lease early.
In its report to MPs, the Crown Estate stated: “Our initial assessment is that while the extent of the end-of-lease deterioration and necessary repairs are not at odds with a lease of this length, they will in all likelihood mean that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor will not be owed any compensation for the early renunciation of the lease once the deteriorations are taken into account.”
Andrew provided the required minimum 12-month notice to vacate the property on October 30. It follows confirmation that King Charles had ordered the removal of two prestigious honors previously awarded to his brother.
Details about the former prince’s living conditions have come under scrutiny as controversy continues over his connections to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The scandal that has been reignited by new accusations of sexual abuse contained in the posthumously published memoirs of Virginia Giuffre. Although Andrew has always strongly denied the allegations.
