British Royal Family Engagements 2018

[tommy100]

I always bear in mind that children attend school for 190 days and teachers work for 195 school days per year. In some cases its not really a surprise if the likes of Sophie and Edward work a number similar to that.
Also bear in mind that the count of days, Dilligently compiled by iluvbertie, is only a count of days public engagments were carried out on. It excludes days the royals may spend working e.g. preparing for duties, especially for royal tours overseas, writing speeches, doing paperwork and meeting staff.

 

[TLLK]

Here is Tim O'Donovan annual tally.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1079543951613456384

 

[muriel]

I always bear in mind that children attend school for 190 days and teachers work for 195 school days per year. In some cases its not really a surprise if the likes of Sophie and Edward work a number similar to that.
Also bear in mind that the count of days, Dilligently compiled by iluvbertie, is only a count of days public engagments were carried out on. It excludes days the royals may spend working e.g. preparing for duties, especially for royal tours overseas, writing speeches, doing paperwork and meeting staff.

I think you make a very interesting point. In analysing the excellent and detailed statistics put together by Iluvbertie, it is very easy to focus on either the number of engagements or the number of days on which the engagements took place. However, when viewed with a more qualitative perspective, you realise that engagements vary in length, location or the amount of preparatory work required on the part of the royal. Also, public engagements is but a part of what a royal does. Often, there are a whole host of meetings that may not be publicised, or meetings with staff or "office days" working through correspondance etc.

 

[Lilyflo]

While it's easy for royal supporters to appreciate the qualitative perspective, as I said above, it's important to keep a positive public perception of the workload. Most people just see the headlines or raw figures & can compare their own working days to that of a working royal. I don't think this will suffice in future to keep the BRF as secure as they are now, which is why I suggest they consider reporting things a bit differently in order to record their workload more accurately.

 

[Iluvbertie]

They have changed their reporting over the past 20 years by giving less detail about engagements e.g. these days only the Queen gets the details of all the things she does on a visit e.g. arrived at xxx and received by the Lord Lt and then visit the building and escorted by the important people was given a tour of the place before unveiling a plaque and met people and then had lunch before listening to a performance etc etc. All that detail for one engagement for the Queen.

They used to give that amount of detail for Charles as well but now he gets visited xxxx and received by the Lord Lt.

They aren't going to list the hours of work reading the boxes and other correspondence that they do or the amount of time they spend preparing to give a speech or researching the people they will meet.

Every so often they do a documentary that shows this work but they aren't going to go the the extent of trying to record the actual hours of work (most would believe them anyway as they believe that if they can't see them doing it then they aren't doing it anyway).

 

[Lilyflo]

They aren't going to list the hours of work reading the boxes and other correspondence that they do or the amount of time they spend preparing to give a speech or researching the people they will meet.

Every so often they do a documentary that shows this work but they aren't going to go the the extent of trying to record the actual hours of work (most would believe them anyway as they believe that if they can't see them doing it then they aren't doing it anyway).

They don't have to record every hour exactly but IMO they will have to be more detailed & explicit in how they present themselves as working hard for the country. The age of deference is over & when the Queen's reign has ended, republicans will seize the opportunity to campaign for an end to our monarchy.

I think Charles understands this, which is why it's widely reported that he intends to have a "slimmed-down" version of the BRF. I also think he'll need to keep seeking fresh ways to show people how much work the family do. The Court Circular isn't enough on its own & might even work against the younger members.

I remember when parliament first started being televised & how many people complained that it was often sparsely attended & that their MP was hardly ever in there. What people couldn't see of course was all the committee meetings taking place & all the other work happening. MPs also relied on local press to cover their work in the constituency because so much of that happened invisibly. Now, canny MPs use twitter & other social media to record what they do & people are better informed about the workload of an MP.

The BRF have some clever people working for them & hopefully they'll be considering a variety of strategies to ensure that there isn't an increasing gap between the actual workload and the public perception of it.

 

[tommy100]

I sometimes wonder if thats why the Court Circular is so sporadically updated nowadays, to devalue its use as a record of what the royals do so they can always say - well not everything is recorded in the Court Circular. It gives them the wiggle room to suggest more is being done but not recorded.
I wonder if its day will be numbered as the current reign approaches its end.

 

[hel]

I sometimes wonder if thats why the Court Circular is so sporadically updated nowadays, to devalue its use as a record of what the royals do so they can always say - well not everything is recorded in the Court Circular. It gives them the wiggle room to suggest more is being done but not recorded.
I wonder if its day will be numbered as the current reign approaches its end.

I thought the issue was that the online version had issues with updating. It was my understanding that the actual CC, which is sent to and published in the Times daily, doesn't have the same issues.

And then, of course, there's the fact that they appear to have a tagging error with Meghan, since no events show up when you select her in the dropdown.

 

[Iluvbertie]

The Times and other sources do update daily as the CC is published in the print versions every day other than Sundays and Public Holidays. The online CC is slack - but that is the way of the British monarchy website - garbage.

I have another source now that often updates almost as soon as The Times would be hitting the streets in the UK. My alternative source - which is largely my 'go-to' source, for instance is up to date to the 30th December while the British Monarchy website is only up to the 19th December. Had I only had the online CC I wouldn't have been able to do my update from two weeks ago let alone the final update and analysis.

Since they changed the online website a couple of years ago the online CC on their site has become less reliable than it was before.

It is the BRF's online media unit that is hopeless as they can't get information out before or after events in a timely manner e.g. Prince Charles and his branch of the family rarely, if ever, post their upcoming engagements on the British monarchy website. Charles sometimes puts up an event of two on his own webpage while the Cambridges and Sussexes only seem to want to use twitter. Andrew doesn't even bother announcing any engagements in advance.

 

[Rudolph]

Thanks again Iluvbertie for all your hard work. Not just the numbers but you get down in the weeds and parse the engagements. I know it’s much appreciated by all members at TRFs

 

[Iluvbertie]

This is an experiment - and if it works it will save me having to type this information out in full but hopefully attached is a comparison table between my figures and Mr O'Donovan's figures.

Where we seem to divurge most is on overseas so I am wondering whether I can pinpoint the difference. I suspect that I count the 'welcomes' on arrival at airports when listed in the CC and there is a representative of the government there while Mr O'Donovan may not - I am guessing at this point but I will do a count of when they appear and see if that is close to the difference.

Anyway here goes with hopefully an attachment.

 

[Pranter]

It works for me bertie...thanks for doing that.


LaRae

 

[Osipi]

The difference lies in the fact that you're more cognizant of every little detail more than Mr. O'Donovan is.

 

[Camsterlaird]

The difference lies in the fact that you're more cognizant of every little detail more than Mr. O'Donovan is.

You also include the York girls, Lady Louise, Sir Tim, Duchess of Kent, and the Michaels - whereas Mr O'Donovan doesn't - my vote is that yours is far more comprehensive as a result. Thank you for your good work.

 

[Lilyflo]

I second the sentiments above from other posters - your data is best. Thank you Iluvbertie.

I had some other thoughts about the engagements. Apologies if they've been covered already here or this is the wrong thread.

Re: the lower number of engagements by William & Harry, how much of this is their decision? For example, is it possible that BP & KP have deliberately kept William's engagements lower because they don't want to elevate his profile above Charles? They must know about the surveys (including a very recent one) that show a significant % of Brits want the crown to skip Charles & go straight to William. Perhaps it wouldn't be beneficial to Charles to have William's engagement numbers equal to (or higher than) his own as this would generate even more media coverage for his heir, rather than for himself.

So although we know that William & Harry will be taking on more work as the Queen reduces hers, I wonder if BP & KP will ensure that it doesn't exceed Charles' public appearances & overshadow him. What do posters here think?

 

[Osipi]

I think a good comparison (if we were able to do so) would be to jump back to the number of engagements and events that Charles had when he was at the same stage of being a full time working royal and compare them to Harry and William's numbers now. Even with that, things are done a bit differently perhaps too than they were in the 70s.

It takes a while to build up a diary of charities and patronages that the royals take on. Meghan is just starting out and filling her diary so there could be no way she would be on par with Anne and the amount of work she does. Its something that builds over time.

Then again if the younger royals were all on par with the older royals, handing down the Queen's and Philip's patronages just may send them into overload or those charities and patronages would have to be dropped.

The Firm and "Team Windsor" know what they are doing.

 

[Lilyflo]

I think a good comparison (if we were able to do so) would be to jump back to the number of engagements and events that Charles had when he was at the same stage of being a full time working royal and compare them to Harry and William's numbers now.

I'm not sure it would be a good comparison because Charles was PoW, whereas William is a generation down from that. At the same stage, we only had one "King-in-waiting", whereas now we have two & I wonder if that creates a tension that affects the number of public engagements William does (or will be permitted to do).

It takes a while to build up a diary of charities and patronages that the royals take on. Meghan is just starting out and filling her diary so there could be no way she would be on par with Anne and the amount of work she does. Its something that builds over time.

I'm not really thinking about them with regards to my question as neither is a monarch-to-be, whereas William is.

The Firm and "Team Windsor" know what they are doing.

I'm sure they do but do you think there's an element of deliberately keeping William's profile below Charles?

 

[Osipi]

To be honest, no I don't. Although public acceptance is important to them, its not what motivates the work. I don't believe they actually pay attention to the numbers but rather spread the work around between the family and who fits the bill for doing a certain thing.

Popularity with the public is a flaky thing no matter how they slice the loaf of bread which is the work they do.

 

[muriel]

I'm sure they do but do you think there's an element of deliberately keeping William's profile below Charles?

I think William's profile will and should be kept slightly lower than Charles' for the fact that one is the PoW and in a lot of matters, King in everything but name, and the other is one step behind.

That said, I don't see this as a matter of conflict between the father and son. I think they recognise how these things work, and appear to be comfortable with it.

> I see William continuing to increase the scope and breadth of his work (and that is not limited to public engagements) over the next few years as he prepares become the PoW himself.

> William now has limited access to government papers, and this will only increase. He also sees various government ministers from time to time.

> He is increasing the sensitivity and complexity of some of the overseas trips he undertakes. The recent trip to Israel and the Middle East was a good indicator, and would have taken a lot of preparation for.

> He is probably also getting to grips with the workings of the Duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster, and is probably spending a lot of time on these matters.

None of this is necessarily reflected in the league tables of public engagements.

 

[hel]

The other important consideration is funding; the money available is just not infinite and so decisions have to be made. I don't think anyone should expect Charles to cut back severely on his own activities so that his children can increase theirs.

I took a quick look at the figures going back to 2011 in terms of trends (year over year and increase/decrease over the period). I started in 2011 because that's when Kate entered the family. I used Tim O'Donovan's numbers because they were already in a convenient table form in an image on the internet.

When you look at the start and end of the period (2011 vs 2018), there has been a clear trend that only five members of the family have had a net increase in the number of engagements they do. These are the percentages (Harry is a huge outlier because he did almost nothing in 2011 due to still being active duty):

Harry +1106%
Kate +155.9%
William +144.4%
Sophie +25.13%
Edward +23.8%
DukeG -3.18%
Anne -8.8%
Andrew -11.21%
Camilla -12.4%
Charles -15.6%
DukeK -17.54%
HM -23.5%
DuchG -41.94%
Alexandra -43.22%

From 2017 to 2018, Edward had the largest percentage increase, followed by William and Andrew. I've also included the absolute +/-. The interesting thing to me about these numbers is the obvious impact of Philip's retirement and the effect it's had on Edward, Sophie and Andrew; they're picking up the lion's share of that work, I think.

Edward +59.11% (+172)
William +28.65% (+49)
Andrew +23.93% (+78)
Sophie +9.63% (+21)
DukeK +8.75% (+14)
DukeG +4.74% (+11)
Alexandra +3% (+2)
Anne -4% (-22)
HM -4.39% (-13)
Camilla -6.8% (-16)
Charles -7.14% (-39)
Harry -7.65% (-16)
Kate -17.14% (-18)
DuchG -20.35% (-23)

 

[Lilyflo]

Interesting analysis - thank you.

 

[O-H Anglophile]

The other important consideration is funding; the money available is just not infinite and so decisions have to be made. I don't think anyone should expect Charles to cut back severely on his own activities so that his children can increase theirs.

I think this is a key consideration. Just because there are other adults available for engagements does not mean there is unlimited money to fund them doing additional engagements.
And forcing people into "retirement" to fund the younger adults doing more engagements would also be wrong.

 

[Iluvbertie]

Edward's figures for 2018 I suspect are an outlyer as he had a special fundraising project in 2018 with his Duke of Edinburgh Real Tennis Tour. He aimed to visit every real tennis court in the world in association with the Duke of Edinburgh Award which was probably about a third of his DoE engagements.

In 2011 Andrew was still Trade Ambassador and has taken quite some time to build up a replacement organisation to take over that role - Pitch@Palace and Ideas - both of which have steadily increased his workload over the past couple of years.

 

[Claire]

Similar there were many millstone's associated with the DOE awards that continued this year. The Duke of Edinburgh Awards celebrated its 50th Anniversary in the UK last year and many of Edward (and Sophie's) were related to this milestone. The International Award also similarly had milestones this year - most of the African International awards celebrated their 30th Anniversary this year and it was Edward who spearheaded the spread of the Award into these countries.


It must be remember that Edward is currently doing the work of the Parton and the President of the Duke of Edinburgh Awards and the International Awards - I doubt he will continue this pace this year.

may i ask how long have you been comprising these lists - how long has Mr O'Donovan? Would I be able to pull this information from the 1980's till today ?

 

[Iluvbertie]

Mr O'Donovan has been doing it since the early 1980s. His letter annually appears/ed in The Times on or close to New Year's Day. You may be able to get some of his letters if you can access The Times online archive but how far back that goes I don't know.

I have been doing it since 2012 and my records since then are available on this site but ... I have become more refined over the years and added more detail.

I spent a far part of last year laid up with a stress fracture in the knee followed by having the knee replaced and while doing nothing much I have started doing an analysis using the online CC from 1997 (hoping it is accurate). It will be retirement hobby as well, along with finishing my Ph.D which the 6 months off work also helped.