King's estate made £1m from selling off land for scrapped HS2 projects

King Charles's private estate has made more than £1m at taxpayers' expense from the sale of land for projects linked to an axed section of HS2, the Guardian can reveal.

- Geraldine McKelvie Senior correspondent

The duchy of Lancaster, which says it is “completely self-financing and does not rely on taxpayers’ money”, secured £1,132,400 by selling land for road upgrades near a proposed station in Crewe.

It had bought Crewe Hall, a 1,400-hectare (3,450-acre) estate set around a Jacobean mansion, in 1936. Some of the land has been sold to make way for new roads and housing developments.

The duchy, which exists to provide monarchs with a private income, has been able to maximise its profits on these deals because it is exempt from most business taxes.

HS2 was supposed to connect Crewe with London in under an hour as well as deliver high-speed services to Birmingham and Manchester.

It was expected to bring as many as 6.3 million extra passengers to the town by 2036 and boost the local economy by £750m a year.

In preparation, officials planned a series of major upgrades to the area's infrastructure. Acquiring land from the duchy's estate was essential and at least three plots were sold before the northern phase of the project was shelved in 2023 amid spiralling costs.