British Royal Family Engagements 2018

[Iluvbertie]

Thanks.

What I have found interesting is the vast array of organisations they support both as a patron, president, trustee etc or just as a one-off for some reason.

There are 1524 organisations actually listed here.

Besides all four countries of the UK another 53 countries were visited by at least one royal with Australia seeing the most engagements of any overseas country - 184 - while little Sark had only one official engagement (a side note - if you get the chance you should try to visit the Channel Islands, including Sark as they are all lovely and all unique.)

[tommy100]

Thank you as ever Iluvbertie for your detailed breakdown, so interesting to see what each royal gets up to.

[Terri Terri]

Let me just add my thanks and gratitude Iluvbertie, you do stupendous work!

[Lilyflo]

It's all fascinating & I'm particularly interested in the number of days spent working rather than the number of engagements. I say this because IMO it'd be better to pack 4 engagements into one day & then have 3 days off rather than have one engagement per day.

The number of working days in the UK for 2018 is 253 (365 minus weekends & bank hols) & the minimum paid holiday is 20 days (or 28 days if including bank hols) so that's 233 working days. However, most people get more paid holiday than that & the average is 33.5 days (including bank hols) so that's 228 working days.

Comparing working royals to the average British worker doesn't look great when you look at number of days worked in a year eg Prince William worked 124 days as opposed to the average British worker who worked 228 days.

However, (and this I think is the main point) working royals rarely retire so instead of looking at how many days worked over a year, I’m looking at the number of days worked over a lifetime & I’m entirely satisfied that our core royal family work hard for the UK.

[VictoriaB]

Originally Posted by Lilyflo

It's all fascinating & I'm particularly interested in the number of days spent working rather than the number of engagements. I say this because IMO it'd be better to pack 4 engagements into one day & then have 3 days off rather than have one engagement per day.

The number of working days in the UK for 2018 is 253 (365 minus weekends & bank hols) & the minimum paid holiday is 20 days (or 28 days if including bank hols) so that's 233 working days. However, most people get more paid holiday than that & the average is 33.5 days (including bank hols) so that's 228 working days.

Comparing working royals to the average British worker doesn't look great when you look at number of days worked in a year eg Prince William worked 124 days as opposed to the average British worker who worked 228 days.

However, (and this I think is the main point) working royals rarely retire so instead of looking at how many days worked over a year, I’m looking at the number of days worked over a lifetime & I’m entirely satisfied that our core royal family work hard for the UK.

It’s an interesting comment. Consider also (and you refer to this in your post) that the Queen, Waleses, Anne, Gloucesters, Kents are over retirement age and that probably additional days will be spent on travel and reading briefings for upcoming trips. On the other hand, a working day (minus travel and in many cases even with travel) is probably a lot less than 7.5 or 8 hours. It makes it very difficult to compare the workload of the Royals Family with ordinary folk.

[Terri Terri]

Originally Posted by Lilyflo

It's all fascinating & I'm particularly interested in the number of days spent working rather than the number of engagements. I say this because IMO it'd be better to pack 4 engagements into one day & then have 3 days off rather than have one engagement per day.

The number of working days in the UK for 2018 is 253 (365 minus weekends & bank hols) & the minimum paid holiday is 20 days (or 28 days if including bank hols) so that's 233 working days. However, most people get more paid holiday than that & the average is 33.5 days (including bank hols) so that's 228 working days.

Comparing working royals to the average British worker doesn't look great when you look at number of days worked in a year eg Prince William worked 124 days as opposed to the average British worker who worked 228 days.

However, (and this I think is the main point) working royals rarely retire so instead of looking at how many days worked over a year, I’m looking at the number of days worked over a lifetime & I’m entirely satisfied that our core royal family work hard for the UK.

Fantastic post and brilliant comments! I never thought about royal work which is for a lifetime as compared to normal workers who get to retire. Prince Philip retired some 30 years after the normal retirement age!

[Iluvbertie]

The Queen has two days off per year. She may undertake official duties on only around 123 days a year but that is only the days on which she has an official engagement. She also has to do her boxes every day as well as read correspondence from other people, talk to her officials about upcoming events, go through speeches she is to give etc.

Charles and William also see the boxes these days so they too only have a few days off per year.

It is a different type of work.

The PM probably doesn't even have two days off a year - even on holidays she would be in contact with her office and the goings on of the government.

The biggest problem is that not all this work is recorded anywhere.

It would, maybe shut up a lot of people who don't think the royals work, if there was a clear hours per day in an office added to the CC.

I remember reading that someone asked the Duke of Kent a couple of years back when he would retire and he said 'only when The Queen does as I am younger than she is and can't possibly retire while she is still working'. He had just had a stroke when he said that but I do think it sums up the attitude of the Kent's and Gloucester's - that they can't consider retiring as the Queen won't and they are younger than she is (the Gloucester's may be the same generation as the Queen but are closer in age to Charles then to Elizabeth).

[Lilyflo]

Yes senior royal work is very different work to most people's but in hours, perhaps not unlike running one's own business, which is also pretty much 24/7.

For those royals who don't have the boxes, they do have the correspondence & speech writing etc but what they don't have is drains to clear, grass to cut, laundry to do ie all the things other people have to do in addition to their working day.

I'm a monarchist & I rarely grumble about the BRF workload so they're safe with me but they aren't daft & they know the monarchy is entirely dependent on the willingness of the population to have a monarch rather than a president. In order to survive as an institution, they've had to change radically & this is likely to continue.

I think it's important that the amount of their recorded work is attuned to keep a positive public perception of it. For example, as suggested above, it might be helpful to record the time spent on admin. I remember a film years ago about Princess Anne that showed her holding a 7.30am meeting with staff. This kind of exposure is very useful I think in showing what's done behind the scenes because unless they show it or record it, it's invisible work & that's not contributing to a positive perception of a hard-working, value-for-money RF.

[cepe]

Originally Posted by Lilyflo

It's all fascinating & I'm particularly interested in the number of days spent working rather than the number of engagements. I say this because IMO it'd be better to pack 4 engagements into one day & then have 3 days off rather than have one engagement per day.

The number of working days in the UK for 2018 is 253 (365 minus weekends & bank hols) & the minimum paid holiday is 20 days (or 28 days if including bank hols) so that's 233 working days. However, most people get more paid holiday than that & the average is 33.5 days (including bank hols) so that's 228 working days.

Comparing working royals to the average British worker doesn't look great when you look at number of days worked in a year eg Prince William worked 124 days as opposed to the average British worker who worked 228 days.

However, (and this I think is the main point) working royals rarely retire so instead of looking at how many days worked over a year, I’m looking at the number of days worked over a lifetime & I’m entirely satisfied that our core royal family work hard for the UK.

Great post. In project management we used to allow only 208 available days per person per year as we also included 5 days for absence (illness etc) and 5-10 days for training (work days but not directly productive).

[TLLK]

Excellent work as always ILuvBertie. I so appreciate being able to view this data that you collect throughout the year.

[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/CepeSmith/status...613456384?s=19

[muriel]

Originally Posted by 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.

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]

Originally Posted by Iluvbertie

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]

Originally Posted by 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.

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