Prince William ‘eyeing £500m move’ as part of major estate overhaul

The heir to the throne is set on tackling housing shortages and nature decline.

The Duke of Cornwall To Visit Duchy College

Prince William (Image: Getty)

Prince William is set to sell off 20% of the Duchy of Cornwall over the next decade. The royal will sell a fifth of the duchy as he plans to invest £500million in tackling housing and nature crises.

As heir to the throne, the Prince of Wales inherited the estate – a portfolio of land, property and investments valued at more than £1billion – when his father King Charles III became monarch. It provides William, who is the 25th Duke of Cornwall, with a private income of almost £23million a year. The money is used to fund the charitable, private and official lives of the Prince, as well as those of his wife Catherine, the Princess of Wales, and their three children, Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis.

In a move reported by The Times today, the prince is expected consolidate his holdings around five geographic “heartlands”. These include the Isles of Scilly, Cornwall, Dartmoor, the Bath area and Kennington, south London.

Will Bax, chief executive of the Duchy of Cornwall, told the newspaper that William decided the duchy “shouldn’t just exist to own land” and “should first and foremost exist to have a positive impact on the world”.

Addressing the plan to sell off around a fifth of the estate, he said: “If we don’t see an opportunity for positive impact, then perhaps we don’t need to be a part of that place.

“But where there is social need and where there is environmental challenge and where there is an opportunity to enable change, then we’ll be a great partner in working with people to achieve that.”

The prince plans to invest half a billion, made up from land sales, development income, partnerships and borrowing, into his priorities, Mr Bax said.

In March tenants of the Duchy of Cornwall said they had been left “enormously stressed” following plans to sell off land on an estate in Devon.

The Bradninch estate, near Cullompton, has been part of the duchy for hundreds of years.

Mr Bax said that all 10 tenants were “engaged in a conversation around buying their farm”, and he believes the majority of them would.