Palace workers given 5pc pay rises to help with cost of living
THE Queen has given her hard-working staff a pay rise as she prepares to celebrate her Platinum Jubilee today.
After a two-year pay freeze, the 96-year-old monarch has agreed to up palace workers’ wages by as much as 5 per cent in a bid to help them through the cost of living crisis.
A royal source confirmed: “Staff will get a minimum of a 2.5 per cent pay rise, rising up to 5 per cent depending on their personal performance. But it’s fair to say the majority will get 5 per cent.
“It is not being billed as a jubilee bonus, it’s in recognition of everyone’s hard work over the past two years.”
A palace insider revealed: “Everyone is really delighted with the pay rise, which was announced in an internal memo. With the cost of living crisis we are struggling like everyone else and it helps to pay the bills. Here’s to the Queen.”
The pay rise is higher than the rate of annual pay growth, which was 4 per cent (excluding bonuses) from December 2021 to February this year according to the Office for National Statistics.
Yet with inflation fast approaching 10 per cent, employees across the board are unlikely to reap the benefits of any pay rises below that figure.
In April, a survey by the Chartered Management Institute found that British employers were offering annual pay settlements worth an average increase of 2.8 per cent to staff. This data includes raises due to job moves and promotions. Pay settlements in the private sector averaged 3.2 per cent, compared with 2.4 per cent in the public sector, the CMI data showed, roughly in line with other similar surveys.
Palace workers have always been notoriously low paid although many positions include room and board at one of the seven official royal residences in the UK.
In 2015, it was announced that the Queen would pay the living wage to all of her servants. In January, an investigation by Insider found most pay rates now achieve that goal. Some employees told the website they tolerated lower wages “because they have immense pride in working for the monarchy”. According to the latest Sovereign
Grant report, which documents all royal household spending from 2020 to 2021, the highest full-time paid staff member earns up to £250,000 while the lowest is paid £18,567.
Overall the Queen employs 499 permanent members of staff and nine employees on fixed-term contracts, with an annual wage bill of £24.1million. The median annualised remuneration of all full-time staff was £27,727, up from £27,134 in 2019.
According to the report: “Employees are encouraged to develop new skills and to continuously grow and progress their careers”, with apprenticeships “encouraged and supported”, adding: “A culture of inclusivity, feedback and recognition is developing, with informal and formal recognition schemes, alongside more interactive communications made possible by the intranet.”