July 2026
1.1. Greenpeace UK welcomes the Public Accounts Committee’s (PAC) timely inquiry into the governance and management of the Crown Estate. As the owner of almost the entire seabed around England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, the Crown Estate holds a structural monopoly over the UK’s offshore wind capacity. It is our view that the Crown Estate’s current leasing model and governance framework represent a failure of its statutory duty to manage public assets in the long-term national interest, creating significant fiscal and delivery risks for the UK’s Clean Power Mission.
1.2. The uncapped auction system introduced in the Offshore Wind Leasing Round 4 (concluded in 2023) delivered more profit to the Crown Estate than all three previous offshore wind leasing rounds combined. It is our view that this constitutes monopoly profiteering. While generating record revenues of over £1 billion in 2024/25, this framework will have artificially inflated development costs.
1.3. The Crown Estate’s executive leadership has argued in legal correspondence with Greenpeace UK that its sole duty is profit maximisation. This narrow interpretation directly contradicts both the Crown Estate Act 1961, which mandates the exclusion of monopoly value, and its updated statutory duties to support sustainable development and net zero targets.
1.4. Greenpeace UK urges the Committee to recommend that the Chancellor exercise her powers of direction to institute an independent review of the Crown Estate’s auction mechanisms, enforce the statutory exclusion of monopoly values, and mandate the reinvestment of previous excess windfall profits into marine biodiversity recovery.
1.5 The Committee should also request that the Crown Estate commit to including as part of the upcoming Offshore Wind Leasing Round 6, an independent valuation process to ensure that any monopoly value has been removed.
2.1. In response to formal legal correspondence from Greenpeace UK in 2025, the Crown Estate asserted that they do not have a legal duty to support decarbonisation or cheaper energy prices, maintaining instead that their primary statutory obligation is to maximise financial returns.
2.2. However, under Section 1(3) and the newly updated Section 1(3A) of the Crown Estate Act 1961, the Commissioners are bound by a duty of "good management," which explicitly includes keeping under review the impact of their activities on sustainable development. Paragraph 5.4 of the Crown Estate’s Framework Agreement clarifies that sustainable development must align with the objectives of the Climate Change Act 2008 and the Environment Act 2021.
2.3. By treating the seabed as a speculative commercial asset rather than a critical public utility, the Crown Estate’s management model actively undermines the government's ability to deliver cheap, secure, clean energy.
2.4. Section 3(1) of the Crown Estate Act 1961 requires the Commissioners to secure "best consideration" but explicitly stipulates that any monopoly value must be excluded from transactions.
2.5. In 2010, the then-CEO of the Crown Estate, Roger Bright, testified to Parliament:
"We are quite clear, it is spelt out that we cannot exploit our monopoly position."
Historically, independent valuation experts were appointed to strip out monopoly premiums. However, the Crown Estate has continually refused to confirm whether it sought to exclude monopoly value from the highly inflated Round 4 auction, which was the subject of an Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) complaint by Greenpeace UK.
3.1. Prior to 2023, option fees for seabed leases were capped and nominal. The introduction of uncapped bidding in Leasing Round 4 (completed in 2023) allowed fossil fuel companies seeking green transition assets to drive lease prices to historic highs. Round 4 delivered more profit to the Crown Estate than all three previous leasing rounds combined.
3.2. These high upfront costs are unlikely to be absorbed by developers, but are factored directly into bids for government-backed Contracts for Difference (CfDs).
● CfD payments are funded through household and business energy bills, which means the public is indirectly subsidising the Crown Estate's record revenues.
● This leasing model undermines the government’s Clean Power Mission by making offshore wind, which will make up the backbone of our clean power by 2030, harder to contract and more expensive.
4.1. The windfall profits generated by offshore wind have led to highly unprogressive financial redistribution from billpayers to the Royals and Crown Estate executives:
● 12% of the Crown Estate's net profit funds the Monarchy via the Sovereign Grant, which means that the increase in leasing fees has contributed to the King’s official income being projected to rise from £86.3 million (2024/25) to £132.1 million (2025/26).
● Over the last decade, the Chief Executive/Commissioner’s income has increased fivefold, rising from approximately £385,000 (2015-2020 average) to £1.9 million in 2024/25.
4.2. This incentive structure rewards executive management for short-term revenue maximisation rather than the rapid, affordable deployment of clean energy infrastructure in the public interest.
5.1. In direct correspondence to Greenpeace UK dated 14 July 2026, the Crown Estate outlined its preliminary thinking for Leasing Round 6 (scheduled for launch in early 2027). While Greenpeace UK welcomes their engagement, their proposals do not go far enough to mitigate risks on delivery and pricing:
● The Crown Estate is considering replacing annual option fees with a fee payable only at the final investment decision, which they have labelled a ‘success fee’. While this reduces upfront development risk, without a transparent mechanism to cap and exclude monopoly value, competitive bidding will still result in inflated success fees that are ultimately passed to consumers.
● The Crown Estate is proposing a rising clock auction system (similar to Round 5), which does not prevent speculative over-bidding by wealthy fossil fuel companies. It merely provides visibility of the price inflation as it occurs.
● The Crown Estate is proposing a target of approximately 6GW for Round 6. However, its own report, The Future of Offshore Wind, states that 20–30GW of new seabed rights must be brought to market by 2030 to maintain a deliverable pathway to net zero. Withholding seabed capacity creates artificial scarcity, driving up bid prices and exacerbating monopoly pricing.
Greenpeace UK urges the Public Accounts Committee to make the following recommendations to the government: