Revealed: how the king secretly profits from dead citizens' assets

The king is profiting from the deaths of thousands of people in north-west England whose assets are secretly being used to upgrade a commercial property empire managed by his estate, the Guardian can reveal.

- Maeve McClenaghan , Rob Evans , Henry Dyer

The Duchy of Lancaster , a controversial hereditary land and property estate that generates huge profits for King Charles, has collected tens of millions of pounds in recent years under an antiquated system dating back to feudal times.

Assets known as bona vacantia, owned by people who have died without a will or known next of kin, are collected by the duchy. In the past 10 years it has collected more than £60m in the funds. The duchy has long claimed that, after deducting costs, bona vacantia revenues are donated to charities.

However, only a small percentage of these revenues is going to charity. Internal duchy documents seen by the Guardian reveal how funds are secretly being used to finance the renovation of properties owned by the king and rented out for profit.

The duchy essentially inherits bona vacantia funds from people whose last known address was in a territory that in the middle ages was known as Lancashire county palatine and ruled by a duke. Today, the area comprises Lancashire and parts of Merseyside, Greater Manchester, Cheshire and Cumbria.

A leaked internal duchy policy from 2020 gave officials at the king's estate licence to use bona vacantia funds on a broad array of its profitgenerating portfolio. Codenamed. "SA9", the policy acknowledges spending the money in this way could bring "incidental" benefit to the privy purse, the king's personal income.

Properties identified in other leaked documents as eligible for use of the funds include town houses, holiday lets, cottages, a former petrol station and barns, including one used to facilitate pheasant and partridge shoots in Yorkshire.

Upgrades include new roofs, boilers and doors, and double glazing.