This summer, the duchy of Cornwall got a new-look website with a bold statement of intent at the top: “We’re on a mission to become a world-leading impact organisation.”
Updating the website will have been the easiest part of that mission. Upgrading hundreds of ageing, mostly rural, rented cottages, farmhouses and country houses will be one of the hardest.
For many tenants, it will be long overdue. One, who is in failing health and struggling to heat a mostly uninsulated home where the only source of warmth is coal-fired stoves, said: “This place is not up to the standards of the 20th century, let alone the 21st. It’s archaic. It needs to be upgraded but I don’t think they want to spend the money.”
There is money. Established in 1337 to provide an income to male heirs to the throne, the duchy of Cornwall is unburdened by many of the taxes faced by other landlords, such as corporation tax, capital gains tax and inheritance tax. It enjoys profit margins of about 60% and pays out more than £20m a year to the monarch’s eldest son.
