William and Kate’s three-day tour by royal train cost almost £48,000

The overall royal travel costs for 2020-21 was £3.2 million, down by £2.1 million on the previous financial year.
Duke and Duchess of Cambridge royal train tour
PA Archive

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s country-wide tour on the royal train cost the taxpayer almost £48,000, royal accounts have revealed.

William and Kate travelled 1,250 miles by rail after setting off from London a few weeks before Christmas last year, to thank communities, outstanding individuals and key workers for their efforts during the coronavirus pandemic.

The couple made stops in Edinburgh, Manchester, Berwick, Batley, Cardiff and Bath Spa and ended their three-day tour by visiting the Queen at Windsor Castle.

The cost of the train is met by the taxpayer and has long been controversial with the service nearly scrapped in 2013 when it was feared the rolling stock would have to be replaced.

Duke and Duchess of Cambridge royal train tour
PA Archive

During the Golden Jubilee year of 2002, the train’s journeys cost £872,000.

The royal accounts revealed the Cambridges’ journey cost £47,965 and the monarchy only made a handful of major royal trips due to the pandemic.

The most expensive was the Prince of Wales’ charter flight in October to Kuwait to pay his condolences following the death of the country’s Emir, Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah, at a cost of £58,993.

The overall cost for royal travel during 2020-21 was £3.2 million, down by £2.1 million on the previous financial year, but despite the reduced number of trips a significant amount of the funds was used for leasing payments for the transportation.

The cost of helicopters was £2.1 million, including operating lease payments of £600,000, large and small fixed wing aircraft cost £100,000 each, rail travel was £700,000, which included lease payments of £200,000, and vehicles £200,000.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in