The disgraced prince is allowed to remain in the Windsor royal residence – which he has called home for more than 20 years – until October 2026, despite being kicked out by the King
Disgraced Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor will be allowed to stay in the Royal Lodge for another 12 months, despite being booted out by King Charles. An inquiry has been launched into the Crown Estate and the royal family ’s residences, after MPs demanded answers on Andrew’s lucrative rent deal for the Windsor mansion.
There was outrage when it emerged Andrew paid £1million for a 75-year lease of the Grade-II listed Royal Lodge mansion in 2003, and since then, he paid “one peppercorn” of rent “if demanded” per year. It forced the public spending watchdog, the Public Accounts Committee, dubbed the ‘queen of select committees’, to demand answers from both the Treasury and Crown Estate.
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Today, the committee, which looks into whether taxpayers’ money is being wisely spent, published details of the property arrangements provided by Crown Estate chief executive Dan Labbad.
The details of Andrew’s lease were shared, with the Termination of Lease clause stipulating that despite the fact the disgraced prince was kicked out of the Royal Lodge by King Charles, he is allowed to remain in the 30-room mansion until October 2026.
The lease claims that Andrew served a “Tenant’s Notice offering to Surrender the Lease” on The Crown Estate on October 30 2025, giving the minimum 12 months’ notice as per the terms of the lease.
This means that until October 30 next year, the disgraced prince continues to be financially responsible for the ongoing costs of maintenance and repair of the property. Once the property has been handed back to The Crown Estate, it will assume this responsibility.
The lease also shows that if no end-of-tenancy repairs were required, Andrew would have been entitled to £488,342.21 for ending his tenancy on October 30, 2026. But the Crown Estate said that following an inspection of the property on November 12, it was thought unlikely that any compensation would be paid.
“Our initial assessment is that while the extent of end of tenancy dilapidations and repairs required are not out of keeping with a tenancy of this duration, they will mean in all likelihood, that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor will not be owed any compensation for early surrender of the lease… once dilapidations are taken into account,” the Crown Estate said.
While Andrew is legally allowed to remain in the Royal Lodge for another 12 months, he is poised to relocate to a small residence on the Sandringham estate in Norfolk.
It has been speculated that the former prince will vacate the Windsor mansion in January to move to Sandringham, in order to avoid any awkward run-ins with the royal family, given that they spend the Christmas period together on the Norfolk estate.
At the end of October, the King officially stripped his disgraced brother Andrew of his HRH style and his prince title, and removed his dukedom from the Roll of the Peerage over his “serious lapses” of judgment.
The move followed the publication of a posthumous memoir by Andrew’s accuser, Virginia Giuffre, and the US government’s release of documents from Epstein’s estate. It emerged that Andrew had emailed Epstein in 2011 saying “we’re in this together”, three months after he claimed he had broken all contact with the convicted sex offender. Andrew denies all wrongdoing.
