What is the Crown Estate?  The Crown Estate manages the assets of Britain's reigning monarch. It is not the private property of the monarch, and cannot be sold. Instead, it is run as if it were a business and pays all profit back into the public purse. In 2009/10 it handed £211 million to the Treasury.  What does the Crown Estate own?  It manages a vast property empire dating back to the records of William the Conqueror in the Domesday Book of 1086. The holdings were worth £7.3 billion in 2008, although they lost value during the credit crunch and the most recent estimate of their worth was £6.6 billion. The portfolio ranges from sought-after assets such as London's Regent Street and Ascot racecourse to more pedestrian investments such as industrial estates, retail parks and a stake in the Bluewater shopping centre in Kent. It also owns 146,000 hectares of farmland, dozens of forests and estates and the majority of Britain's coastline, as well as the rights to all naturally-occurring gold and silver. It has more than 12,000 tenants paying full market rents, including many farmers, and owns the freehold to many London properties such as Millbank Tower.  It is run by a board of eight trustees and nearly 400 staff led by chief executive Roger Bright, and is accountable to parliament. A House of Commons Treasury Committee report last year called on the government to keep closer watch on its management because it "struggles to balance revenue generating with acting in the wider public interest".  Where do Crown Estate income and profits come from?  Of £321 million of regular income last year, £242 million came from rents and service charges on urban property. Other sources including farm rents, harbour moorings and fishery licences. Profits are expected to rise to as much as £450 million by 2020. Lucrative new sources of money include offshore wind farm developers, who must pay the Crown Estate for the rights to the seabed around Britain's shoreline out to a distance of 12 miles. There are already 436 turbines around the 7,700-mile coastline and the number is expected to exceed 6,000 within a decade.
The Civil List system of funding the Queen and her family is to be swept away,   in a reform which will require belt-tightening by the Royal   Family.