The one good thing about Duchess Kate’s foray into part-time blogging is that the press office of Kensington Palace issued more than a dozen photos of Kate “working” with editors from HuffPo UK. And in the photos, we get to creep on the interior design in Kensington Palace, a renovation of which cost the British taxpayers more than £4 million. And after all that time and expense, William and Kate barely use their huge apartment (a mansion within a palace) in London. Most of their staff works from KP, and KP also includes a “public section,” with public employees that don’t technically work for Will and Kate but work for the Historic Royal Palaces, a charity. And since there’s so little activity around KP these days, the Historic Royal Palaces tried to cut their employees’ hours and wages.
Members of staff working in the public section of Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge’s London residence have rejected plans to reduce their working hours as they believe this would bring their overall annual earnings below the living wage, according to the Sunday Times. Discussions between Historic Royal Palaces, the charity that employs the staff, and the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) will take place on Monday, the Times reports, and it is expected that a ballot over strike action will follow.
“It’s in the contract that they can cut the London living allowance and they’re also cutting the starting times in the morning and the finishing times,” one Kensington Palace employee said. “I’ll miss it if I have to go but I just couldn’t carry on working here if it goes ahead.”
A spokesperson for Historic Royal Palaces confirmed that “changes to working hours affect a small number of colleagues in the front-of-house team at Kensington Palace”, and that talks with PCS were in progress. The spokesperson added that a year’s notice of the changes had been given and that hourly rate wages would remain above the living wage.
“We value our staff very highly and hope to reach a mutually satisfactory agreement,” they said. Last year staff at the Queen’s residence, Windsor Castle, threatened to go on strike over the introduction of extra duties without an increase to pay. The strike was eventually called off after a “significantly improved” pay offer was agreed, the BBC said.
While I understand that the funding for these employees’ salaries comes from a different place than the money funding Will and Kate’s upkeep, I do have to wonder… how pissed off are these workers than Will and Kate get to faff about in Norfolk on Charles’ dime, taking £3000 helicopter rides back and forth and spending thousands of dollars on knock-around clothes? I bet the salary-discrepancy could be fully funded for years if Charles just rerouted PART of Kate’s frock and wiglet budget to the Historic Royal Palaces. Let them eat wiglets = let them eat cake!
Here are some photos of Kate taking that £3000 helicopter ride two weekends ago.
Photos courtesy of WENN, Fame/Flynet.
Glad it’s a time for strikes and not chopping heads.
You’re glad or you bet they’re glad? Wills & Kate should seriously read up on Marie Antoinette.
@Bettyrose They are probably thinking we should all have some cake…
LOL! Kaiser, you always pick the best lead photos of Katie to set the tone.
Agreed! Was thinking in the previous post how lucky she was to have such a pretty smile, which she definitely uses to her advantage, and here she is looking completely deranged. This site has destroyed any sugar tendencies I have (except for G & C).
Yes, that photo is quintessential Kate. Huge smile and look interested. I don’t think she’s ever tried actually being interested.
Katie Bucket’s thought bubble:
Frozen smile…look of keen interest…stifles yawn…”I can’t wait to get away from these boring peasants and shop ’til I drop…”
Smiling but thinking:
“I secretly hate you people and think you’re all stupid – not smart like me who got a prince! Can I go shopping now?”
No matter how much you try to stick to yourself and try not to pay too much attention to what others around you have, it’s hard when it’s rubbed in your face like that. I make a good living but 6 months before I started my current job, they changed the contracts for new employees and cut vacation days and the 13th month salary. Not uncommon of course but 90% of my colleagues who work the exact same job have more money and more vacation days. It’s not THAT much and I’m perfectly fine overall but it grates, it really does. So when these people work next door to Katie McLazybum and her gentleman farmer hubs, it has to be a massive slap in the face when their wages are about to be cut below a living wage. Jesus Christ. From a PR standpoint alone it would be a smart investment to pay the people who work there well.
They have an unnecessary and expensive tenniscourt and cutting salaries? I would be pissed too.
Historic Royal Palaces used to rent out WK’s current apartment for use as an exhibition space. They managed one exhibition before they were booted out in favour of WK.
WK seem to have taken over that space as well as Diana’s apartment. The Huffpo day was held at Diana’s apartment.
If Historic Palaces don’t have enough space for their exhibitions, it limits the scope and type of exhibitions which leads to drop in visitor numbers which means they can’t afford to pay their staff.
Ps: they also have ongoing fundraising efforts all the time to fund themselves.
It must annoy them to have to give up these 2 exhibition spaces and then see them go unused by WK.
Yes and given the increase in security it must also make it difficult for the tours as access to the beautiful gardens will have been restricted. If they are having to reduce salaries and hours then W&K and their attitude is clearly having a negative effect on its ability to support itself. W&K should pay rent.
Full market rate rent. On both apartments.
They wouldn’t be able to afford it, would they? Full market rent in space of that size, in Kensington abutting the park/gardens? I can’t imagine what it would be!
Well, given that a mansion in the private road (Kensington Palace Gardens) adjoining KP (where all the ambassadorial residences are – its nickname is Billionaires Row) went for around £15million a few years ago, I imagine that you are looking at several thousand per month.
Its a beautiful Palace but its a shame that they seem to be struggling as its in a prime location. Easy to get to. Thou i was there recently walking in the park close to the Palace and there is a lot of security with areas closed off. I know HRP make money by allowing productions to film on their various premises – and i can imagine privacy paranoid Willy has had an effect on that at KP. It can be quite a lucrative revenue stream.
Charles forcing them to pay rent once he’s in charge, might open their eyes.
Princess Michael was whinging about paying £10k a month for her KP apartment about a decade ago. Prices have quintupled since then, what with London property being the world centre of laundering dirty money right now.
Meanwhile, there’s a 6 bedroom house in Kensington Palace Gardens for rent right now. At a rent of, wait for it, £368,333 per calendar month.
http://www.zoopla.co.uk/to-rent/details/39527381?search_identifier=ddfebb369f64fbb25c072f53ed4106dd#BrxzSfCJMQDU4hDv.97
Betti: those mansions are in the £70M -£100M range at the moment.
IIRC, the cheapest one sold recently was to that Ecclestone girl-woman and that was considered a bargain at £70M.
I may throw up any second. Those prices are obscene.
littlemissnaughty – that sets the pay for the workers in sharper focus, doesn’t it? The London Living Wage is currently at £9.40 an hour. And that’s not a legal requirement. The legal minimum wage is going up to £7.20 an hour in April. You couldn’t rent a bed in a flophouse if you’re earning minimum wage in London.
I was there this past summer, had been to London before but never KP. They had a pretty large exhibit on Victoria, and another one on Fashion that was very fun to see. Did there use to be more space than that?
It was pretty crowded, and not cheap to go into (16.5 GPB / about $23 US).
Lucy2: Yes.
They had to give up Margaret and by the looks of it, Diana’s apartments so that WK could use them as home and office space respectively.
If you go on youtube and google royal wedding dresses KP, you see snippets of the only exhibition they held in Margaret (now WK)’s apartment. They kept Margaret’s colour scheme which was beautiful. By all accounts, WK painted over it to beige.
Wasn’t the first colour purple? Then once George was born she had it painted beige?
All KP’s use to W&K seems to be as a 22-room clothes storage warehouse with changing rooms. I’d think that it would have been cheaper if they stayed at some hotel whenever they were staying overnight in London and just rented out a storage unit for their clothes.
The Queen and PC overindulged these two and now actual ‘normal’ people have to suffer for it.
Or she could just pop into BP, or the Middleton luxury flat in Chelsea to change from one coatdress to the next.
^ That’s true.
I think Kaiser alludes to the interior decoration of KP as shown in the HuffPo blogger event pix, but my understanding was that event was NOT held in W/K’s own apartment–it was a different part of KP. Correct me somebody if that’s wrong.
Oops I see LAK already said it the HuffPo event was actually in Diana’s old space in KP
An interesting KP insider story…I work in museums and a colleague at my current job was a curator at KP rather recently. He said the offices of Historic Royal Palaces are very near Will & Kate’s humongous and farcically-named “apartment(s).” After George was born, a sign was installed on the outside of a nearby door that read, “Please pass by this door quietly: a young child sleeps in the adjoining room.” I found it funny that A) the Cambridge’s personal living space was so near regular pleb offices but moreso that B) despite this, my colleague NEVER saw W&K once. Well, unless you count the many sightings of royal helicopters leaving from the courtyard :-/ Unbelievable.
That is interesting!