Now is not the time to devolve the Crown Estate

Stephen Price

January 2024 was a pivotal moment for Wales and our relationship with the Crown Estate.

Siarter Cartrefi, in partnership with Beth Winter MP and Liz Saville Roberts MP, held an open meeting, with the support of Michael Sheen, to launch a new campaign focused on devolving the Crown Estate to Wales. And boy has it been a success.

Whilst largely overlooked now, Siarter was pivotal in those early days, and has been no less active in the background, as council after council across the country, quite rightly, calls for the profits from the vast swathes of land owned by the English crown to be devolved to Wales - a simple call for chwarae teg and for parity with Scotland.

The event back in 2024 pulled together individuals and organisations in a sustained joint campaign that demanded, and still demands, the devolution of the Crown Estate with the profits directed into a Sovereign Wealth Fund, managed by the Welsh Government, for community benefit.

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The Crown Estate

The Crown Estate controls vast areas of Welsh land and sea, including 65% of the foreshore and riverbed and over 50,000 acres of land.

While it profits from offshore wind and other developments in Wales, up to 75% of its revenue goes directly to the UK Treasury, with a further 25% allocated to the monarchy – leaving Wales with no say over how its own resources are used.

The value of Crown Estate holdings in Wales has risen from £96m in 2020 to over £853m in 2023.

Scotland secured control of its Crown Estate in 2016.

A YouGov poll taken in spring 2023 showed that 75% of Welsh voters were in favour of Wales taking control of the management and assets of the Welsh Crown Estate rather than it remaining in the hands of the UK Treasury.

With local authorities facing severe financial pressure the money flowing out of Wales to the Crown Estate has become more of an urgent matter.

For 2024, as of 16th December 2024, Cardiff Council’s payments to the Crown Estate totalled £17,190 on items such as:

Pedestrian footways/footbridges and cycleways over or near rivers – £8,599

Boat hoisting fees on our rivers – £6,753

Water Taxi charges and slipway leases – £1,576

Other councils see much larger sums, especially when large infrastructure projects such as off-shore windfarms and new port facilities are completed or under construction.

Catrin O Neill, founding member of Siarter Cartrefi said: “Devolution of the Crown Estate is a key recommendation from our community consultation work. The people of Wales increasingly see this as a really important cause.

Wales should benefit directly from the profits of renewable energy, and to use this money to address the poverty and inequality in communities across Wales."

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Are we making the right demand?

Naturally, I'm with the 75% of voters (and not, it seems our turncoat Labour leaders) who wish to see "Wales taking control of the management and assets of the Welsh Crown Estate".

But being the idealist that I am, I'm also a little perplexed as to why this is the only demand being made. It is, after all, the meekest of asks.

Looking at the Crown Estate in Scotland, King Charles remains the owner "in right of the Crown," meaning it's not his private property, but rather a public asset managed by Crown Estate Scotland for the benefit of the Scottish people, not the monarch.

Is this really our end goal? To shift titles and funding, but still ultimately have a Crown Estate? To still acknowledge a monarchy 'ruling' over Wales in 2025 and beyond?

In the sticky mess of the United Kingdom, Wales and Wales alone becoming a republic might just be too hard a sell right now, but one thing we should be able to unite on with our friends in the north, south, east and west, is that there is no place for a 'Crown' whatsoever (unless it's on stage or in the cinema of course).

And it's time that we all had a frank conversation about bringing this current pantomime to an end.

Mrs Windsor

Former Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood will forever remain one of my heroes for addressing Mrs Windsor thusly, back in 2004 - becoming the first minister to be expelled from the then National Assembly.

She said at the time: "I don't recognise the Queen.

"It is consistent with the position that I have held for a very long time. Last time I boycotted her visit.

"I don't think I was treated fairly, I don't think it was necessary.

"I called her that because that's her name."

Calls to simply devolve the Crown Estate are relevant, needed, overdue, but they're not going anywhere near far enough. And in their current guise they're legitimising the inherently illegitimate - not only a foreign (yes, foreign) monarchy over Wales, but a monarchy's existence in general.

Storm the Palace

Monty Python and the Holy Grail hit the nail on the head back in 1975, showing King Arthur roaming around the countryside attempting to gather knights for the Round Table.

When he declares: “I am your King!” to an unimpressed peasant, her response is as appropriate today as it was back then: “Well, I didn’t vote for you.”

Public opinion has shifted dramatically over recent years, with a growing number of Welsh citizens now wanting the monarchy abolished. Fewer of us are excited by the royals, while most people are on the fence and open to persuasion.

Decades of exposé and exploits have done little to win us over, and even if they had, even if their charm offensives and pretty displays warmed our cockles like never before, the fact remains that the obscene amounts of inherited (stolen) wealth and power in the hands of one family is both outdated and unwarranted.

In the case of Wales, our land was taken by bloodshed and colonial might, why on earth are we not calling for atonement, for abolition, now?

Mirroring our financially crippled councils falling like dominoes to call out the unfairness of the Crown Estate, Britain's colonies too are one-by-one severing ties with the UK and our illegitimate Crown. Its total demise is an obvious given, so why then are we so quiet about putting this sick dog to sleep for everyone's sake?

Analysing the cost/benefit ratio is the usual way to shut up us revolting peasants, with sleight of hand mathematics and a reductive assumption that poor old Blighty won’t have any more tourists without a king or queen on the throne. And even if the maths is to be believed, so does Seaworld, so do dancing bears and so, once, did freak shows. Does something's ability to make money make it legitimate?

It's a poor indictment of the UK, and especially its overlooked countries and regions, if we really think that a few square miles of London and a dysfunctional family of landed gentry are all we've got to sell to the world.

Now is not the right time to call for devolution of the Crown Estate.

Now is the time to call for the absolute return of Welsh lands into Welsh hands - and those swathes of land and sea to certainly not be administered by or in the name of an illegitimate crown.

We are citizens, not subjects, and the time for the abolition of the monarchy is long overdue.

Mr Windsor is not our king.