When Prince Philip saw a busload of servants arrive to run Sandringham for just one guest – him! – he was horrified. No wonder King Charles wants to cut the Royal Household by a fifth, says HUGO VICKERS
It is by no means unusual for a new broom to sweep away the excesses of the past – or attempt to – and King Charles is not the first senior figure to express concern at the size and complexity of the Royal Household.
Prince Philip was certainly conscious of how many people it took to run the larger royal residences and said so.
I know there was a time when he had a few days free and thought it would be nice to spend them at Sandringham. Hardly had he settled in than he looked out of the window and observed a busload of staff arriving – from telephonists to cooks – all needed to run the Big House for the few days he would be there.
He was horrified. Fortunately Wood Farm became vacant soon afterwards. (This was the house where Prince John, uncle to the late Queen’s father, George VI, had lived until his death in 1919.)
Staff from Clarence House pay their respects as the late Queen’s coffin passes by. The Royal Household is likely to be cut by one fifth
King Charles wants fewer, better-paid staff in the Royal Household, with less duplication of roles
The late Duke of Edinburgh was horrified by the busload of staff required to run Sandringham House for one guest – him – so he moved to stay in nearby Wood Farm instead. He is pictured on his last public engagement in 2020
Sandringham House in Norfolk. The King is said to be frustrated that three people are required to complete one task – one to do the job, two to check
It was much smaller and could be run with a skeleton staff. So from then on, that’s where he and the Queen tended to stay, except when they opened Sandringham House for family parties at Christmas or in the summer.
Wood Farm is where Prince Philip lived in retirement between 2017 and 2020.
However frustrated he might have been with the large staff and, perhaps, the flummery involved, Philip was not the monarch. Now his son Charles is flexing his muscles and I don’t doubt change will soon follow.
According to The Mail on Sunday, the King is fed up with hearing ‘this is how it was done in the Queen’s reign’.
He has identified that sometimes the same job is done repeatedly, when it only needs to be done once. If a maid attends to a room, should her work really be checked by three others?
It is suggested that the King plans to tighten the ship, reduce the number of those employed and instead pay fewer people better wages.
It is more than understandable that Queen Elizabeth II ran things in her own particular way and equally understandable that the King will wish to do some reorganising.
Quite rightly the Queen ran her household along established lines and no one could possibly accuse her of being personally extravagant. She was very different from the Queen Mother who ran her court in an opulently Edwardian way.
The Royal Household has been conscious of expenditure for many years, in fact, and much did indeed change in the late Queen’s reign.
At her invitation, Michael Peat, a partner at KPMG, led a study into its financial management as long ago as 1986.
It was said at the time that if there were three people doing a set of jobs, he would reduce the number to two, and expect the same standard of service.
In 1990 he became Director of Finance and in 1996 Keeper of the Privy Purse. In 2002, his mission at the Palace achieved, he moved over to Clarence House to attempt the same for Prince Charles.
As essentially feudal set up was streamlined and run more like a company office.
William Tallon, left, late footman to the Queen Mother at her funeral in 2002. After her death, the Royal Household dispensed with his services
Angela Kelly, dresser and confidante to the late Queen Elizabeth. She has now left the Royal Household and moved to Yorkshire
Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip at Sandringham. It would be understandable if the Queen preferred to keep the Royal Household in its familiar form, says Hugo Vickers, even if it now seems outdated
Yet something was lost in this process, because in the early years of the late Queen’s reign and in earlier reigns, there was a sense that working for the monarch was like being part of a happy family, unshakable loyalty being part of the deal.
I remember being told in the 1970s that when a housekeeper from Sandringham came to London for an operation, the Queen put her up at Buckingham Palace the night before and made sure there were flowers in her room.
The point of the story was that the Queen was a thoughtful employer and that such a thing was unlikely to happen if someone was working for a big conglomerate.
Many of those who joined the Household staff as young men or women, stayed their whole working lives until they finally retired.
Gradually that system changed. William Tallon, who served the Queen Mother as her Page for half a century, said that – under the new regime – hardly had he trained a young footman than he would be off to pastures new.
Once the young man had undertaken duties at Clarence House, Royal Lodge, Birkhall and Sandringham, he could depart for America and get a supremely lucrative job as a butler, with his royal background his ticket.
Similarly at the Royal Mews, where it was eventually said that it was hardly worth the expense of fitting the man for his uniform.
Redundancies are never popular. And they are expensive – to make a mass of staff redundant in one go could cost millions.
Hardly had the Queen died than a notice was circulated warning of redundancies and many staff over 60 were invited to take early retirement – mainly those at Clarence House.
Charles, in other words, has already shown a degree of ruthlessness.
The timing was brutal, but perhaps not unexpected. Contracts sometimes have a clause that the job ends instantly on the death of ‘the principal’.
Sadly there are plenty of examples of loyal servants of the monarch being chucked out. Queen Victoria’s Munshi was shoddily treated in 1901.
Sir Tony Johnstone-Burt, Master of the Royal Household, will be required to cut staff while attempting to retain a spirit of loyalty
William Tallon, the Queen Mother’s page, was swiftly evicted from his lodge house at Clarence House, though his little house then remained empty for some time. Angela Kelly, the Queen’s dresser, was soon on her way from her house in the park at Windsor.
All this will no doubt be a headache for the Master of the Household to resolve.
The King, meanwhile, has bigger headaches, of which an outsized palace staff list is only one small part.
- A Royal Life by HRH The Duke of Kent and Hugo Vickers is published by Hodder & Stoughton. The paperback is out now
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