How many more homes can the ‘slimmed-down’ royals justify?

SO what are we to make of the news that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are to take possession of their third home, four-bedroom Adelaide Cottage, a ten-minute walk from Windsor Castle?

The announcement of their new living arrangements coincides with the decision to move all three of their children to a £21,000-a-year Berkshire prep school, and the charitable response, of course, is that they have every right to relocate to ensure the best possible educational outcomes for George, Charlotte and Louis.

The less charitable response, however, is that at a time of an exploding cost- of-living crisis affecting working families up and down the country, securing the use of an additional property looks clumsily insensitive.

Certainly for a couple who have always demonstrated a deft hand in managing the public relations side of their royal life, the fact that they now have three enviable addresses at their disposal is a rare mis-step.

It is, after all, not that long since their grand Kensington Palace home was extensively renovated with £ 4.5million of taxpayers’ money. In the face of criticism at the time their spokesman was moved to defend the cost to the public purse by describing Apartment 1a – the former home of Princess Margaret – as their ‘one and only official residence’ and where they would live for ‘many years to come’.

Less than a decade later, those words are beginning to sound just a little hollow. Now Adelaide Cottage joins Kensington Palace and Anmer Hall – their country retreat in Norfolk – as part of an impressive portfolio of properties.

(There remains uncertainty over the precise ownership of a fourth property, Tam-Na-Ghar, a cottage on the Balmoral estate which the Queen gave William when he was a student at St Andrews University. For some years he and Kate stayed there often but it is thought it is no longer a royal address and is now let commercially.)

As government ministers grapple with the economy and households confront the prospect of ever-soaring energy bills and rocketing food prices, where else should people be able to look for a bit of moral support than the Royal Family?

No one deludes themselves that moderation could make much difference to a family whose head is one of the richest women in the world with a personal fortune of £365million. But gestures are like smiles and royal waves. They cost nothing and achieve much.

So do William and Kate really need this third property? And if so could they not have put one of the remaining houses in mothballs or even – daringly – announced that they would stop using one of them altogether?

Naturally, it is only fair to point out that Prince William and Kate are meeting the cost of renting Adelaide Cottage themselves and that, because of its location within Windsor Home Park, it needs, we are told, no extra taxpayer-funded security nor a costly refurbishment.

Indeed by royal standards the 200-year- old house is positively modest and certainly has neither the proportions nor grandeur of their palace apartment or ten-bedroom Anmer Hall on which they are said to have lavished £1.5million, paid for mostly from Royal Family private funds.

CERTAINLY moving to Windsor represents both practical and strategic sense to this attractive young family. The duchess has happy memories of her own upbringing in the countryside and the cottage’s location means George and his siblings will be less than an hour away from their Middleton grandparents, Carole and Michael, at Bucklebury, Berkshire.

Crucially, with the Queen now based full time at Windsor Castle, occupying a house only minutes away places the couple at the heart of royal life. Wanting to be close to his 96-year- old grandmother was another powerful reason for William to make the move.

Meanwhile, the Cambridges are retaining all their other homes and their office staff will continue to be based at Kensington Palace.

yet for all the talk that this move involves no extra burden on the taxpayer, public perception of the move has not been universally popular. Social media was awash with claims of royal extravagance.

The commentator and former BBC royal correspondent Peter Hunt noted: ‘A fourth home for the Cambridges is a reminder the royals don’t suffer from the cost-of-living crisis and a looming recession in the same way as the rest of us.’

In the early days of their marriage William and Kate settled in low-key Nottingham Cottage at Kensington Palace while the 22-room Apartment 1a underwent an extensive refit, including a new roof, an overhaul of the plumbing and electrics and the installation of not one but two new kitchens – one for entertaining and one for intimate family suppers.

But even though the couple paid for all fixtures and fittings including carpets and curtains, the building costs dramatically escalated. They included £20,000 on an 800ftlong ‘privacy’ screen of trees.

They also took on the renovation of Anmer Hall, where they re-routed a driveway, built a conservatory and replaced rotting window frames.

But it is when public money is involved that criticism takes off. One theme hard to ignore yesterday was questioning how the latest move tallied with long-standing plans for a slimmed-down monarchy.

‘As always it’s the optics,’ says a seasoned courtier. ‘On the one hand we are preaching a smaller institution based on core members of the family. But if those core members are seen to have multiple homes it invalidates the entire approach.’

For the public expect to see not more homes but fewer.

No one straddles that predicament quite like Prince Charles who leads the crusade to shrink the size and scale of the Royal Family. He has four residences of his own, Clarence House in London; Highgrove, Gloucestershire; Birkhall on the Balmoral estate; and Llwynywermod in Wales.

But he also spends several days every August at the Castle of Mey, the Queen Mother’s former home in Caithness. Then there is Dumfries House, the Palladian mansion he saved for the nation, and an estate in Romania that he purchased in the 1990s.

As King he will inherit Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle, Sandringham and Balmoral as well as other royal boltholes, such as Wood Farm, in Norfolk, and Craigowan Lodge on Royal Deeside.

With so many properties at his disposal, cynics may question just how slimmed down the prince wants the Royal Family to become.

At least yesterday the Cambridges were trying. Flying to Balmoral to join the Queen for a late summer holiday, they travelled in economy.