King Charles will not move into Buckingham Palace for five years due to renovations

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King Charles will reportedly be stopped from moving into Buckingham Palace for five years due to its £369 million (C$572 million) renovation.

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His Majesty, 73, and Queen Camilla, 75, will instead be based 400 yards away at Clarence House for three days a week and Windsor Castle for two – with weekends spent in Sandringham, Norfolk, according to the British The sun.

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“Renovations are way behind schedule, but the monarch is supposed to live in Buckingham Palace,” a source told the publication on Friday that Charles’ move into the palace was being delayed.

“This is the heart of the monarchy in London, otherwise it risks becoming just a tourist attraction. We practically have a king without a palace to live in.’

Workers are only halfway through a 10-year renovation of the palace, which will include installing new electrical, plumbing and heating systems and will make it uninhabitable by 2027.

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Charles is rumored to be planning to host his family Christmas at Sandringham, a source said The sun he considered “a kind of retreat when necessary.”

They added that this will be especially needed during “a difficult Christmas this year” as the royals continue to mourn the loss of Queen Elizabeth, who died on September 8 aged 96 at her Balmoral estate in Scotland.

Meanwhile, Charles’ coronation date has been announced as May 6 next year, almost 70 years after the Queen’s coronation in June 1953.

Charles is rumored to be aiming for a more subdued coronation than his late mother’s.

His ceremony at Westminster Abbey, London, will reportedly last just over an hour, have fewer rituals and be more varied than the ceremony where the Queen was crowned.

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Mail on Sunday reported plans for Charles’ coronation are contained in a plan dubbed Operation Golden Globe, which is said to include plans to cut the ceremony short in recognition of Britain’s cost-of-living crisis.

“The king has removed a lot from the coronation in recognition that the world has changed in the last 70 years,” a source told the publication.

The publication also reports that the guest list for the event will be reduced from 8,000 to 2,000, with “hundreds of nobles and parliamentarians being left out”.

The late queen was crowned 16 months after becoming monarch, although the official ceremony usually takes place within a year of the royal’s ascension to the throne.

Her coronation cost £1.57 million – the equivalent of £46 million (C$71.3 million) today – with more than 8,000 guests representing 129 nations traveling to Westminster Abbey for the event, which was so full that VIPs were forced to sit on improvised benches.