- Insider analyzed advertised pay rates for 503 jobs in the palace — information normally exempt from public-records requests.
- The royal household appears to have abandoned an ambition to pay its staff at a living wage in recent years.
- At least 274 positions at the household advertised pay rates within pennies of a living wage.
In 2015, a Buckingham Palace insider signaled that the Queen would begin paying her staff a living wage that reflected the true cost of living for UK residents. "Queen to pay the Living Wage to servants," read the Daily Mail headline.
A review of the royal household's public accounts of its spending and an analysis of advertised pay rates suggest that while the palace is mostly meeting that goal, a large chunk of workers are getting the bare minimum.
Insider identified 503 jobs at the royal household with pay rates advertised between 2015 and 2021. Ten of those positions advertised salaries starting below the living wage recommended by the Living Wage Foundation. A further 274 positions advertised pay within pennies of that rate.
Former staffers for various members of the royal family; a spokesperson for the staff union, the Public and Commercial Services Union; and others told Insider that workers tolerate the low pay because they have immense pride in working for the monarchy.
"Our members take pride in their work," the PCS Union told Insider. "But as a culturally significant institution in the public consciousness, the royal household should be leading the way on good pay and working conditions."
The Living Wage Foundation, an influential nonprofit formed in 2011, calculates a minimum wage needed to support the true cost of living in the UK. UK companies have widely adopted its model wage benchmark, which is higher than the legally required minimum wage.
In 2015, the royal household's public account of its spending in the annual Sovereign Grant report said it "aspires to offer London and Regional Living wage as a minimum." In 2021, the foundation's benchmark was £10.85 an hour (about $14.50) in London and £9.50 (about $12.75) in the rest of the country.
"The Queen pays in a very tight-fisted way," Norman Baker, author of "And What Do You Do? What The Royal Family Don't Want You To Know," told Insider. "It's been apparent to me for some time that when [job] adverts come up that they are not advertised at a generous salary," he said. "It's just shocking that one of the richest people in the world pays some of the lowest wages."
Baker is a former Liberal Democrat minister and member of the Privy Council, a large group of current and former lawmakers that advises the Queen on royal prerogative.
There, he says, his advice is "to pay people properly."
'Just about paying the living wage isn't the standard we ought to expect from our head of state'
In addition, the palace benefited from Windsor Castle's location when it comes to paying staff. The castle is within walking distance of the London city limit. Windsor borough is one of the wealthiest and most expensive towns. But because Windsor is technically outside of London, the palace may pay the lower regional wage.
"They have a huge amount of money, an endless amount of money, really," said Graham Smith, a spokesperson for Republic, a group that campaigns for the abolition of the monarchy. "They are quite capable of leading in terms of paying people a living wage at the very least and make sure that people are well-paid for what they do."
"These people are working in, living in London, or just on the outskirts of London, an expensive place to live … You would think that they would be leaders on this issue and pay comfortably over that [the living wage] and reward people properly for the work they do, which I imagine can be fairly demanding given the people that they're working for."
In response to Insider's extensive request for comment, a spokesperson for the royal household said, "It is disappointing to find glaring inaccuracies and outdated information being relied on for a series of ill-informed and baseless claims about the operations of The Royal Household."
The palace declined to specify the matters it considered inaccurate or outdated.
The palace's staffing practices are shielded from the Freedom of Information Act
It's nearly impossible to produce an overview of the royal household's staffing practices, which are exempt from UK Freedom of Information Act requests.
Based on available public records, such as job advertisements and official announcements, Insider compiled — in one place, for the very first time — a searchable database of 1,133 positions in the royal household.
Insider's database includes posted salaries for top aides like the Queen's private secretary and the keeper of the privy purse, as well as advertised salaries for hundreds of much humbler positions.
Most of the Queen's official business is funded by taxpayers' money.
The grant totaled £85.9 million for the fiscal year ending on March 31st, 2021. It covers things like palace repairs, royal travel, and staffing the royal household. (It does not cover staffing for other working royals like Prince Charles, Prince William, and Kate, but it does fund some of their official business, such as trips abroad.)
The palace has stopped talking about the living wage
Every year, the royal household issues an annual spending report, and since 2014 that report has taken a progressively weaker line on paying a living wage.
Sovereign Grant reports for 2013-14 and 2014-15 said the palace offered "London and Regional Living wage as a minimum to staff" and included a commitment to pay at the market median. There was an exception for staff who were provided housing.
But the 2015-16 report said only that the household "aspires to offer London and Regional Living wage as a minimum to staff."
Mention of a living wage disappeared in the 2016-17 report, and even meeting the market median was framed as an aspiration.
What the Queen actually pays her workers
So Insider looked at the palace's help-wanted ads to see what the Queen pays her workers — from those who scrub the palace fireplaces to those charged with washing the dishes after a royal banquet.
The palace appears to have made some progress in paying a living wage:
- 23% of the jobs were advertised at or below the living wage.
- 19% of regional jobs were advertised at or below the living wage.
- 27.7% of London positions were advertised at or below the living wage.
The London Living Wage would be the equivalent of about £21,000 a year. Median annual pay for all full-time UK employees was £31,285 in 2021.
The PCS Union, which represents some palace workers, told Insider that many of its members' pay rates at the household were "far too low."
The Living Wage Foundation says it's confirmed that more than 9,000 companies operating in the UK, including Nestlé, Burberry and Ikea, pay the living wage it recommends. But a foundation spokesperson said the royal household was not among them.
The royal household has never spoken to the foundation, the foundation's director, Katherine Chapman, said. She told Insider she would be "delighted" if the palace were interested in committing to paying its living wage.
A castle among multimillionaires
Of the 503 royal roles Insider looked at, 171 were at Windsor Castle. The 1,000-room castle, which sits on 13 acres, is in one of the priciest boroughs in the country. But its location just outside of Greater London allows the palace to pay the foundation's Regional Living Wage, which in 2021 was £1.35 lower than the London living wage.
Yet you'd need deep pockets to afford to live there.
"Windsor may not technically be in London, but it is to all intents and purposes part of that region that is a very expensive place to live," said Smith, the Republic campaigner.
In 2019 Windsor was the UK's richest town, housing 250 multimillionaires, according to the research firm New World Wealth. Many residents would surely love to send their children to nearby Eton College, where William and Prince Harry were educated. The real-estate company Zoopla included Windsor in the 15 most expensive UK towns to buy a home in.
Insider identified 119 jobs at Windsor Castle with advertised pay rates in 2018 that were no more than 15 pence (about $0.20) above the regional living wage of £8.75 an hour that year.
Eighty-two percent of the jobs in Windsor were advertised with pay within pennies of the Regional Living Wage.
A job listing for an admissions assistant at Windsor Castle in 2019, for example, was advertised at £9.45 an hour. If the castle were in London, five miles to the east, the position might have paid about £2 more an hour.
"Just about paying the living wage isn't the standard we ought to expect from our head of state," said Smith, the spokesperson for Republic.
No-one gets rich on the Living Wage. It is designed to represent the minimum needed to cover living costs, but not much more. "The real Living Wage covers all the everyday needs of living – household bills, rent/mortgage payments, travel, food – as well as a little extra to cover for unexpected costs – a broken boiler, a new winter coat for a child," said a spokesperson for the Living Wage Foundation.
Watering down a commitment to paying the living wage
In opening up palaces to the public, the royal household employs hundreds of people in hourly low-wage positions, such as retail assistants, ticket-sales and information assistants, and visitor assistants.
Insider's analysis found:
- Five positions at the Royal Collection Trust were advertised with salary rates starting below the living wage, all advertised at £18,500 or less.
- Another 255 roles at the Royal Collection Trust were advertised at 45 pence or less above the living wage.
- Five Buckingham Palace positions funded by the Sovereign Grant — that is, taxpayers' money — were advertised with salaries starting at less than £19,000, below the living wage.
Some palace positions — such as kitchen porters, palace attendants, and housekeepers — are advertised as including housing or meals "for which there is a salary adjustment."
Two former senior staffers for Prince Charles — Grant Harrold, a former butler, and Carolyn Robb, a former executive chef — told Insider that their jobs paid lower than comparable jobs outside the royal household.
A former live-in staff member, Harrold said shifts were often long. "Because you were on duty," he said, "you were fed, you were watered, you were warm, you were comfortable" — a situation he said allowed him to save money.
Senior aides are compensated handsomely
While most hourly-wage positions in Insider's database were advertised at or below the living wage, the salaried roles appeared to be paid above the benchmark and offer benefits like pensions.
Insider's database shows that higher-paid jobs in the royal household are in areas like accounting, human resources, and executive retail.
Salaries for these generally white-collar jobs start at about £40,000 and top out at £190,000 for senior positions.
The Sovereign Grant report says salaries for the household's six directorate positions — the lord chamberlain, the comptroller of the lord chamberlain's office, the keeper of the privy purse and treasurer to the Queen, the private secretary to the Queen, the master of the household, and the director of the Royal Collection Trust — are benchmarked against the UK's senior-civil-service pay scales.
You might get to share a joke with the Queen
None of the palace workers who fall under the PCS Union were willing to answer Insider's questions about their working conditions. The PCS Union spokesperson told Insider that members were "subject to stricter than usual contracts and NDAs."
But former higher-level employees emphasized that some royal-household employees accepted their lower pay because of the perceived privilege and historic significance of working at a royal palace.
Baker, the former minister, said there is an "attitude that people should be grateful for being in the same place as the royal family, and that they should be prepared to work for a very low wage just for the sheer honor of being there."
Richard Fitzwilliams, a longtime royal commentator and journalist, told Insider that genuine reverence for the royal family means that for many, the job comes with an "actual gut feeling of loyalty."
"The point is you do have a lot of people who would be prepared to work for less for something that they very, very definitely believe in," he added.
In her 2019 memoir, Angela Kelly, the Queen's stylist and dresser, described playing practical jokes on the Queen and — because they happen to have the same-size feet — even breaking in the monarch's shoes.
Robb, the former chef, told Insider over email that despite the lower pay "it was the job that I wanted above all others." She said she had other benefits "which made it very worthwhile for me."
Harrold, the former butler, told Insider that many roles are an impeccable boost to the résumé — he can likely be a butler anywhere on the planet now.
Working for the monarchy also provides unique experiences. Harrold said that when he gives talks about his former work, people are "literally gasping and laughing and crying" when he reveals he's danced with the Queen.
Baker disagrees with this mindset. "Well, more fool them," he says. "Why should they take a small sacrifice in their salary to serve some of the richest people in the world?"