Queen Elizabeth cutting costs to survive, told to save more

LONDON: She's facing the pinch of recession like everyone else in Britain. Her home is badly in need of repair. She's checking her mounting gas and power bills. She has even stopped using the phone unless necessary. And her pension hasn't gone up in a decade.


The only factor setting her apart from the rest is the scale of her poverty, measured in millions of pounds and not pennies. After all, she is the queen.

The latest report of Britain's National Audit Office (NAO) reveals Queen Elizabeth has had to adopt stringent cost-cutting measures across all her palaces in the last one year.

The attempts to reduce the household's maintenance budget include cutting back on repairs, letting more properties and reducing the phone bill by more than 20 per cent.

The queen's annual maintenance grant of 15 million pounds from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport had not changed since 2000-01, a reduction of 19 per cent in real terms.

In an attempt to deal with the shortfall, the royal household has more than doubled the number of properties it lets to 36, increasing the annual rent by nearly 100 per cent to 1 million pounds. The number of residents living in rent-free accommodation has been reduced since 2000 from 70 to 42.

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