At first glance, few would claim that Buckingham Palace was looking slightly shabby.

The carpets are not particularly threadbare and the wallpaper is not exactly peeling from the walls.

However, it could be argued that, inside and out, the palace has lost the pristine shine one might expect to find inside the United Kingdom’s most famous address. The grants for structural maintenance of royal properties come from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, and are entirely separate from, for example, the budgets for staff salaries and entertainment — which come from the Civil List — or the travel budgets — which come from either the Department for Transport or the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

The Palace cannot use the travel budget to pay for wallpaper, in the same way that the wallpaper budget cannot be used to send the Duke of York on a golfing trip to St Andrews.

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However, Her Majesty could point government officials to two particular incidents that suggest extra money for maintenance is not necessarily a royal request too far.

Several years ago, during an investiture in the ballroom — the palace’s biggest internal space, built on the orders of Queen Victoria — a large section of plaster fell from the roof to the floor, narrowly missing the several hundred people gathered for the ceremony.

More recently, there has been a noticeable deterioration of the facade of the palace quadrangle, built by John Nash in the early 19th century. The ageing state of masonry became all too clear when, in 2006, a piece of stone moulding plummeted gravel-wards, landing not far from the Princess Royal’s car.

Concern is also mounting over the need to fix leaks in the roof of the palace Picture Gallery, which houses works by Rubens, Rembrandt and Canaletto.

The monarchy asking for more money — in this case an extra £4 million a year — is always going to be grist to the republican mill. But there will be no special favours for Buckingham Palace. The Queen’s accountants will have to fight very hard for increases in their budget and, in this regard, the Palace is no different from any other government department.

Just don’t expect to find tiaras on eBay any time soon.

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