Prince Charles uses cash from unclaimed legacies to aid his charities

Britain's Prince Charles has used money from people who die without wills or family in Cornwall, southwest England, to fund his own charities and to support bursaries at his old private school in Scotland.

As Duke of Cornwall, a title that already provides him with a £18 million (HK$217 million) private annual income, a quirk of history means Charles becomes the owner of the assets of anyone living in the county who dies "intestate".

Last year that provided him with more than £450,000 and he is sitting on £3.3 million in cash from many years of collecting Cornish legacies, latest accounts show.

The benevolent fund he set up to use the money made one of its largest grants of £5,000 last year to the elite private school of Gordonstoun in Scotland where a place now costs £30,000 a year.

The biggest grant was £19,300 to Charles's charity Business in the Community, whose supporters include some of the biggest firms in Britain. Another £1,000 went to his London-based Prince's Foundation for Building Communities, which champions his controversial ideas about architecture and planning.

The donations have drawn particular criticism in Cornwall, where there were calls for the inheritances to be channelled into the public purse as they are in the rest of England.