Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s £2.4million renovation should be a public “outrage”, claimed a royal commentator. Graham Smith, CEO of anti-monarchy pressure group Republic, urged for the country to be “much more clear and honest” on the cost of the Royal Family. He told Sky News: “This £1.24 cost, that’s not really the cost of the monarchy. The real cost is about the £345million every year if you include all the things they haven’t mentioned over the last 24 hours.

“And even the costs that they do admit to, £80million, that is a very large bill for providing the country with one Head of State.

“You never justify any public expenditure by dividing it by everybody in the country.

“So we need to be much more clear and honest about what this actually costs us.

“Then we need to say well why is that cost including expenditure on a private home for the grandson of our Head of State? It just isn’t okay.

We need to be much more clear and honest about what this actually costs us

Graham Smith

“I mean ten years ago MPs were outraging the country by admitting to their own expense claims.

“Much smaller than what we’ve been hearing about today, why are we not outraged in the same way about Prince Harry spending our money on his own house?”

Work at Frogmore Cottage is expected to continue over the summer as Meghan Markle and Prince Harry obtained permission to paint the exterior of the Grade II listed house at the expense of the taxpayer and to landscape the gardens out of their own pockets.

The cost to the taxpayer of the decorating work this summer is expected to be less than £350,000.

Major work on the cottage including replacing defective wooden ceiling beams and floor joists have been finished.

Outdated and inefficient heating systems were updated, and the home needed substantial new electrical rewiring, including its own electrical sub-station, and new gas and water mains were installed.

Palace sources have denied reports that the house has been equipped with a mother-and-baby yoga room, complete with a floating or sprung floor, for Meghan and the couple’s seven-week-old son, Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor.

But they have conceded that the couple may have paid out of their own pockets for luxury bathrooms and kitchens kitted out to a higher specification than the Royal Household allows for in its judgement of what is acceptable for the taxpayer to fund.

Sir Michael Stevens, the Keeper of the Privy Purse, the Queen’s chief financial advisor, explained why the money was spent using cash from the taxpayer-funded Sovereign Grant on the couple’s new official residence.

Sir Michael said: “The property had not been the subject of work for some years and had already been earmarked for renovation in line with our responsibility to maintain the condition of the Occupied Royal Palaces estate.

“The Sovereign Grant covered the work undertaken to turn the building into the official residence and home of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and their new family.

“The building was returned to a single residence and outdated infrastructure was replaced to guarantee the long-term future of the property.

“Substantially all fixtures and fittings were paid for by Their Royal Highnesses.”

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