The Prince of Wales received an annual private income of more than £23 million last year, accounts have shown.
William, as heir to the throne, is entitled to the surplus profits of the Duchy of Cornwall estate, and received the full amount in 2023-24, his first full financial year as the Duke of Cornwall.
The money is used to fund the official, charitable and private lives of William, Kate and their children Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis.
Kensington Palace also announced a number of new patronages for William.
They include a switch in role for the passionate football fan from president of the Football Association to its patron – reflecting his seniority as Prince of Wales. The FA patronage was previously held by his grandmother Queen Elizabeth II.
There was also an insight into the working world of the prince, and his penchant for sending a barrage of WhatsApp messages, unlike his father the King, the 24th duke of Cornwall, who prefers the old-fashioned telephone as a means of communication.
Alastair Martin, the Duchy of Cornwall’s secretary and keeper of records, said: “Sustainability is a passion that they both share but there are some differences.
“His royal highness the 24th duke would telephone me. His royal highness the 25th Duke, will WhatsApp me.”
He added: “The day after her late majesty died, I rang Prince William to say ‘Welcome to your Duchy, Sir’.
“I obviously knew him, I’d been working with him for the previous eight years or ten years, to really explain to him what his future was during the time he was heir to the throne.
“And he said, ‘I’m going to give you my mobile telephone number – if you want me, just get me, just message me’.
“And that’s how he works and he is very involved. There will be weekends when my WhatsApp messages will be in double figures and I will be very responsive.
“If something has gone well or badly, I will want to tell my boss and he’ll be straight back.”
William is adopting a small number of charitable roles to reflect his new responsibilities in Wales and as Duke of Cornwall, but he will not be taking on a huge number of new positions, after the recent Buckingham Palace review of royal patronages, his private secretary Ian Patrick said.
This was an “evolution” of the past charity work by members of the royal family, Mr Patrick said.
The prince will become patron of the Welsh Guards Charity, the Royal Cornwall Agricultural Association and president of the Victoria Cross and George Cross Association, and move from president to patron of Fields in Trust, as well as his new patronage of the FA.
Mr Patrick said: “The Prince and Princess of Wales’s number one priority is to deliver impact.
“The approach they take to their charitable endeavours is an evolution of how members of the royal family have worked in the past.
“Their royal highnesses wish to focus their time on a smaller number of causes that are aligned with their values and allow them to build deeper relationships with organisations, engage in a constructive way, and deepen their knowledge of the issues that these organisations champion.”
A further patronage announcement will be made in the autumn.
He also hinted at an “exciting” new project which William and Kate have personally funded to help improve mental health outcomes in rural communities, details of which will be released later in the year.
Kensington Palace, giving an annual update on William and the Princess of Wales’ activities for that financial year, said the number of staff employed by the couple’s household has risen from 50 to 66, including secondees.
Diversity figures show 14% of staff were from an ethnic minority background, down from 16.3% of staff the year before.
The Palace said the prince paid tax at a standard UK tax rate once official costs had been deducted, but the amount he paid in tax was not disclosed.
The King, as the previous Prince of Wales and Duke of Cornwall, disclosed the voluntary tax he paid in his annual Clarence House review – £5.892 million in 2021/22.
Charles’s annual review would also detail his broad income and expenditure of the Duchy money, plus details of the number of valets, housekeepers, dressers chefs, butlers and gardeners he employed, and his tax bill, but there was no such detail for the Waleses’ household.
It is understood that rather than deliver a lengthy report, a clear bullet-pointed annual update was chosen instead, and the information included was what the Kensington Palace household was willing to share at this stage.
Graham Smith, chief executive of Republic which campaigns for an elected head of state, said, also referring to the King’s Duchy of Lancaster estate: “It is outrageous that while we’re facing a sustained cost-of-living crisis we effectively pay Charles and William more than £20 million each every year.”
He accused the royals of being “cagey about taxes and spinning like mad to justify these increases”.
He added: “They continue to claim the duchies are their own private property, which isn’t true.
“The duchies are State assets. It’s time their profits were diverted to public services and local communities, not the pockets of two billionaires.”
The Kensington Palace update highlighted the £70 million in direct and in-kind support for William’s Earthshot Prize since its creation four years ago, and Kate’s Shaping Us National Symposium, and William’s Homewards initiative which is working to end homelessness in six locations across the UK.
Accounts released on Wednesday showed the Duchy generated profits of £23.6 million in 2023-2024, down slightly from £24 million the year before.
Last year William received about £6 million from the Duchy because he became the Duke of Cornwall on the death of the late Queen half way through the financial year, and the Duchy also asked to retain an extra proportion for the day-to-day running of the estate.
Mr Patrick also spoke about the Princess’s cancer diagnosis, but said there was no new update.
“For the latter part of this period, her royal highness has been undergoing a course of preventative chemotherapy which remains ongoing. We will not be providing an update on that today,” he said.
He discussed William and Kate’s personal private philanthropy and the causes to which they donated through the year.
“Their royal highnesses regularly undertake private philanthropy and ordinarily we wouldn’t share this, but I wanted to give you a window into that today.”
Mr Patrick said the couple had donated to the London Air Ambulance, James’s Place, the Shout mental help text crisis service, and disaster relief causes after the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria, the war in Ukraine and the hurricane in the Caribbean.
