What will happen to the queens 50,000 acre Balmoral house/estate if Scotland votes for independence?

General Chat Chat / Discussions
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Will the Scottish people demand it is handed back to them? Could anyone blame them?

Just to put it into some sort of context, 50,000 acres is about 80 square miles!

That’s bigger than the areas of cities like Cardiff, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Belfast, Liverpool, Manchester, Bristol, Oxford, Cambridge, Preston, Leeds, Newcastle Upon Thyme, Coventry, Brighton, Stoke on Trent, Plymouth, Derby, Dundee, Exeter, Gloucester, Peterbourgh, Southhampton, Reading, Norwich, Bath, Worcester, Cantebury, Salford, Leicester, Wolverhampton, Milton Keynes, Portsmouth… pretty much every city in the UK (apart from London no doubt!)

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I think the first minister has already said that , should Scotland vote for independence, they would be keen to maintain links with the royal family

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I believe it is the private property of the royal family - bought by Prince Albert in the 19th Century? So I think it would need to be a negotiated transaction just like any other property…assuming the royals want to sell. They may want it to stay as a “second” home :roll_eyes: I don’t think Scotland has the funds to buy it anyway, sadly…I do think it belongs here and I’m sure Scotland could make better use of it then them…

Scotland can’t demand it is handed back I don’t think. Although I would like to be part of the group who tries :joy:

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Balmoral is a private estate owned by the Queen.

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Well what does that mean though? “maintain links”? What if we want our own king? (Who is still alive by the way.)

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That’s what I thought - Scottish people will probably want it back :lol:

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Well you know what they say “I want never gets!” I imagine the royals would want it…I wonder if we could get away with charging them though :thinking: Their house on our land…hmm we could finance a lot of things with that :joy:

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What income does the estate make? Bear in mind it’ll probably lose a degree of tourist income if the royal family no longer stay there.

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Balmoral is privately owned - if Scotland tried to confiscate all privately owned houses and land,they would have a lot of legal battles!
What about Scottish folk who own land and houses in England - would you want to confiscate their property too? :thinking:

A more relevant question would be - how would the Crown Estates be divided up?

The management and revenue of the Crown Estates inherited from the Scottish monarchy have already been devolved back to the Scottish Parliament.
It has a unique legal standing of being owned by the monarch in “right of the Crown” but I expect it would be possible to transfer ownership of this property already earmarked for the benefit of Scotland.

However, this didn’t happen until 2016 and not all Crown Estate assets in Scotland have been transferred - and some of the other Crown Estate assets and investments purchased over the last couple of centuries may have been funded by revenue received from Crown Estates in Scotland, so dividing up the assets / revenue of the Crown Estates may be problematic if Scotland gain Independence and want to ditch the joint monarchy.

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Erm … I know I’m going to regret asking … but who is he?

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I had to look up who it was - you learn something new every day on this site!

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This is incorrect.

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Oh, sorry. I will unlearn that Wiki snippet then and wait for you to tell us the correct answer.

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Idi Amin?

Possibly one of his 43 children?

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I’m sitting here all Gog Magog.

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Come on Pixie … are you trying to tell us James VI of Scotland and 1st of England was a usurper?

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I believe Balmoral is privately owned by the Queen.

Maybe Charles will inherit it.

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The billionaire Danish clothing tycoon Anders Holch Povlsen represents a newer generation of Highland laird. Anders Holch Povlsen made his fortune through a clothing and retail empire in his native Denmark. Mr Povlsen is said to have fallen in love with the Highlands during a childhood fishing trip, and now owns about 220,000 acres spread across 12 estates in Sutherland and the Grampian mountains.

The billionaire ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, has also been busy snapping up about 63,000 acres of Scotland’s countryside, and plans to build a plush new nine-bedroom lodge at Inverinate in Wester Ross.

750,000 acres of the country is owned in overseas tax havens, while separate RoS data suggests property in Scotland worth £2.9bn is owned by offshore companies.

The biggest landowner is the government agencies and other public bodies who manage huge areas of land on behalf of the nation. By far the biggest of these is Forestry and Land Scotland, which was known until very recently as Forest Enterprise Scotland. It manages more than a 1,000,000 acres of public forest that is said to generate about £395m for the economy every year, largely through timber and tourism.

Scottish Natural Heritage owns a string of nature reserves across the country, such as Tentsmuir in Fife.

A Scottish government project which aims to map who owns every part of the country by 2024 was launched five years ago, but has so far only managed to register about a third of the country’s total land mass.

The government believes 57% of rural land is in private hands, with about 12.5% owned by public bodies, 3% under community ownership and about 2.5% is owned by charities and other third sector organisations. The remainder is thought to be owned by smaller estates and farms which are not recorded in those figures.

If Scotland bought Balmoral (and it would cost a pretty penny) what would they do with it to recoup the cost?

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Its was bought by Prince Albert it’s private property like any other grand estate .

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It belongs to the family bought by Prince Albert so unless Scotland has different property laws that steal private property from people no it won’t go back to them.

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