Why Insider is publishing a database of positions in the Queen's household, one of the least-scrutinized parts of British public life

• Insider published a database of 1,133 positions in the royal household, shedding light on one of the UK's most protected institutions.
• The palace releases only select financial information and is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act.

Queen Elizabeth II is among the most-watched people in the world, but the inner workings of her household are obscured by a web of legal exemptions and arcane privileges which make it difficult to see how it works.

So Insider has compiled a searchable database of 1,133 royal household positions that make up "the firm." Compiled entirely from publicly available sources, the database illustrates the massive scale of the British monarchy.

The household is responsible for everything from cleaning the palaces to counting the Queen's swans.

The database includes mysterious-sounding titles — such as fendersmith, carpet planner, and yeoman of the glass and china pantry — along with hundreds of workers in less glamorous roles who support the official business of the Queen.

At the top of this vast workforce are an elite number of executives, in highly paid and influential positions, such as the Queen's private secretary.

Insider spent months combing through the Crown's public announcements and job advertisements to compile the database, which demonstrates how unwieldy it is to get an accounting of the royal household that goes beyond top-line budget numbers.

Although it produces an annual financial report that's audited independently, legal exemptions keep much of the household's inner workings — and their effect on the UK — shrouded in obscurity.

In response to a detailed request for comment and a review of the database, Buckingham Palace spokesperson disputed its accuracy and clarity, without providing specifics.

They said: "Details of employee [sic] paid by the Sovereign Grant are disclosed annually by The Royal Household in the Sovereign Grant Annual Report and Accounts, providing transparency and information on the wide range of roles within The Royal Household which support the official work and public duties of the Royal Family.

"It is disappointing to find glaring inaccuracies and outdated information being relied on for a series of ill-informed and baseless claims about the operations of The Royal Household."

Where does the royal household's funding come from?

The Queen draws on public funds to cover her official business as head of state. The UK government has been funding the sovereign since 1760; since 2012, the public payout that subsidizes the Queen's official duties has been known as the Sovereign Grant.

Each year, the UK treasury determines an amount of taxpayer pounds to pay into the Sovereign Grant, based on a percentage of the profits generated by the Crown Estate.

The estate includes land, property, and mineral reserves that have passed from monarch to monarch for centuries. But the Crown Estate isn't the Queen's private property, and it surrenders all its revenues to the treasury.

In addition to covering the Queen's official costs, the Sovereign Grant funds some of the duties of senior royals, such as Charles and Camilla, the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall; and William and Kate, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.

The grant also pays for the upkeep of occupied palaces, travel arrangements, and staffing and running the Queen's household.

For 2020-21, the Sovereign Grant was equal to 25% of the Crown Estate's revenue, or £85.9 million ($116.1 million). That percentage was raised considerably in 2017, from 15%, after the royal household argued it needed to modernize and make urgent repairs to its palaces.

The royal household also generates income for one of its departments by opening up palaces to the public. That income took a hit after the pandemic began, with the royal household reporting a 53% loss — largely from loss of visitor income — in 2020-21.

"At the moment, people are feeling a bit sorry for the palace because they've got a big black hole in their pocket due to COVID," David McClure, the author of "The Queen's True Worth," told Sky News when losses were first projected early in the pandemic.

"But one should equally remember that in the last nine years, the Sovereign Grant has really gone up and up and up," he added. "It's actually gone up by two-thirds in the last nine years and if you look at inflation, inflation has only gone up 20%, so they really have had a rise in income in the last decade or so."

'It's an opaque institution'

In its annual report on the Sovereign Grant, the royal household presents itself in terms familiar to any corporate employer, and it volunteers some key data.

Its accounts are vetted annually by an independent body and can come under political scrutiny via a parliamentary Public Accounts Committee, which last reviewed them in 2014.

Despite the modern tone of its self-reporting, the royal household has made extraordinary efforts to excuse itself from the scrutiny that other UK institutions undergo.

In successive legislation since the early 2000s, the royal household has secured for itself complete exemption from Freedom of Information requests, as Index on Censorship reported.

"As a consequence, what we know about this fascinating and hugely significant part of the British state still consists mostly of reheated gossip, self-interested briefings from a range of current and former royal flunkeys, and tabloid revelations," professor Philip Murphy, the director of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies at London University, wrote.

Graham Smith, the CEO of Republic, a group that advocates eliminating the monarchy, told Insider that the household's self-reporting didn't go deep enough.

"The finance report misses an awful lot of costs," he said.

As an example, he said the household only itemizes its travel spending when the cost of a trip tops £15,000 ($20,500).

"It simply doesn't measure up to the scrutiny that you would get elsewhere," he continued. "If it's an NHS trust, for example, if they feel they have misspent money, or if their standards are slipping, there'll be consequences."

He added, "But if it's the royal household, nothing."

"It's an opaque institution," he said.

An employer exempt from discrimination law — and with the privilege to vet those laws

There are even more gray areas when it comes to the royal household's employment practices.

Its 2020-21 Sovereign Grant report showed that senior roles are largely held by men. Ethnic minorities make up 8.5% of its workforce — compared to about 13% of the UK population. The report gave no breakdown of how those employees are distributed across senior positions.

These disclosures are entirely voluntary. An investigation by The Guardian in June found that the royal household is exempt from race and sex discrimination laws.

The paper also found that, back when the palace made the case for that exemption in 1968 — when the UK's fledgling Race Relations Act was under review — its reasoning was that it was "not, in fact, the practice" to employ people of color in office roles at the time.

Buckingham Palace told the paper that it now has its own process for complaints of discrimination, but it didn't elaborate.

The 2020-21 Sovereign Grant report said the royal household aims to be a "best in class" employer for diverse applicants, "appointed on merit."

The Public and Commercial Services Union, which said it represents a number of royal household workers, said the exemption was "a relic of the past and must be reversed."

"The public sector should be leading the way on equality duties, and the royal household should be no exception, particularly given its historical and cultural significance with many in the country," a PCS spokesperson told Insider.

Historically, the royal household has also exercized unique rights over legislation that might affect its workings.

The Guardian reported that more than 1,000 draft laws have come under the Queen's consent. This is a little-known privilege that allows the royal household to examine bills for any issues that might affect royal workings before they are debated in Parliament.

Government guidance to ministers on the procedure, dating back to 2018, discusses at least three draft bills where the royal household's employment practices justified invoking the Queen's consent. It's unclear whether the palace lobbied for any changes to the bills.

Grant Harrold, who served as Prince Charles' butler for seven years, said he relished his work for the royal family. But he believed transparency was key to seeing the institution he loved continue past Elizabeth's reign.

"There's a lot of admiration, there's a lot of time for the Queen. And when she's gone, that will go," he said. "And they will be scrutinized, and they will be questioned: 'Is it worth having a royal family? Is it worth the money?'"

He added, "And these questions will come up, and they have to get it right."