From the BBC
Buckingham Palace should be opened to more paying visitors when the Queen is not in residence to fund improvements to the royal estate, MPs have said.
The Public Accounts Committee criticised the Royal Household for mismanaging its finances.
Chairwoman Margaret Hodge said there was "huge scope for savings" on the annual £31m of taxpayer funds given to the Queen to spend on official duties.
I'm not sure how much people think this will raise. It's already open throughout August and September and gets around 400,000 visitors at about £35 each, which is around £14m. I can't see how you're going to add to that.
Wouldn't it be better to sell it off? 42 acres of real estate in Westminster? Google recently paid £650m for 2.4 acres in Kings Cross, so it would have to be worth at least £10bn for the land. That's a much better use of it than collecting £15-30m/annum.
Put the Queen into Kensington Palace (which is empty and was good enough for George II) and you can do all the pageantry for the tourists there.
Tuesday, 28 January 2014
Buckingham Palace
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Hmmm, £10bn invested at a nice conservative 4% would be £400,000,000 pa. Not to mention all the money saved on maintenance. Even the Royal family would have difficulty spending at that rate.
@"Google recently paid £650m for 2.4 acres in Kings Cross, so it would have to be worth at least £10bn for the land. "
Wouldn't selling off so much land depress prices a bit? Or did your estimate take that into account?
If so how did you calculate it?
"Put the Queen into Kensington Palace (which is empty and was good enough for George II)"
Why not sell off Kensington Palace instead? It is on the most expensive street in London, after all.
LF, BP+garden is about 40 acres, it's the nicest and best bit of London (stuck between parks).
Stigler was going very much on the low side - that central area is worth several times as much as Kings Cross, but let's go low...
Call it 5,000 high rise flats under max density allowed by London Plan (1,000 hab rooms/hectare divided by 3), make a £2m profit on each = £10 billion.
And you don't seriously think that an extra 5,000 luxury flats are going to crash the market? That's like an extra 1% on supply, the Chinese spend £billions a year on flats and land in London.
Don't sell it, grant long term leases linked to the local rental index. A nice revenue stream to pay for the massive landowner subsidy bill...
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