King Charles - disquiet at Highgrove & the gardeners’ exodus - SUNDAY TIMES INVESTIGATION

[vera99]

Murdoch is growing bolder in his dotage — first with Trump, and now with another bombshell investigation into the grasping, stagnant, and catastrophically out-of-touch Windsors. And yet we keep pumping more public money into this so-called dysfunctional family.

What you need to know

King’s demands, staff shortages and low pay led to gardener exodus at Highgrove

Royal charity which runs gardens told to offer mental health support after formal investigation

Charles has lost 11 of 12 garden staff since 2022 including two head gardeners who quit within a year

Monarch said of one worker: “Do not put that man in front of me again”

After Ukraine invasion King proposed plugging staff shortages with war refugees or the elderly

At one point half of staff were on minimum wage

https://archive.ph/fspT3#selection-1495.0-1501.155

Imagine and presume away by you too then, CathyorClaire.

The answer - Highgrove isn’t taxpayer funded, but in your imagination the income streams it helps to create could hypothetically be partly paid to the government is some form of tax. Instead of the reality: the income stream it helps create has actually been partly paid by Charles to the government as income tax.

No you gardener gets the rate a self employed contractor demands. That is a wholly different situation to paid employees and the costs the employer bears associated with those employees.

How many times to I have to explain? Do you not read the thread? A full explanation is just five posts up, you paying the man to mow your lawn is in no way comparable to employing staff.

And no he doesn’t get double NMW his costs have to come out of that.

Wild.

C. pays the 'income streams' Highgrove creates to his charity.

The tax W pays on the rental on Highgrove is unknown because he's decided he doesn't want to tell us.

The gardens are leased to the Foundation but the King retains access to the swimming pool.

Oh read the thread!

Fgs.

If you want someone to tend your garden the area of expertise you need is horticulture not botany.

From the article, I thought it was the King’s responsibility. Here is the quote that led me to believe that:
’’This included asking staff to tame plants growing by his pool or his personal study, and requesting that fruit be poached and made into jam at the house. Such requests appear to violate the terms of the agreement through which the charity is present at Highgrove’.

Actually "Carry on Cleo".

True, but if you add the ‘on costs’ you mentioned , I still pay more … though I am quite happy to do it.

I see what you mean. I was going by the earlier paragraph with the heading 'The deal with the duchy'.

It's a very poorly written article.

Your maths don’t work out, can you show how you have come to that conclusion?

BigWillieLittleTodger, I took my figures from this website, https://www.talkstaff.co.uk/true-cost-employing-minimum-wage-2025/, which gives the on costs as just over £27000. Insurance per employee I think is about £150 max a year. That would make it just over £13 per hour (over 52 weeks at 37.5 hours). Tools etc. would be tax deductible. I think most gardeners charge at least £15 per hour or more.
However, your figures may well differ.
i admit I am not a fan of Charles although I had great respect for his mother. I just think that he seems to want to pay as little as possible and then wonders why the work is not up to his standards.

You would imagine so rather than resorting to intemperate fury but monarch's it would appear have different standards to Jospehine Pleb and her garden gnome waterfall.

Bigger picture;

1. Rough Annual Tax “Savings”

So annually, Charles III may save (compared to a regular taxpayer):

• £5–7 million in corporation/capital gains/income tax on Duchy income.
• £12–15 million or more if you include full income-style taxation on Sovereign Grant equivalent.
• Total £15–25 million per year, as a very rough estimate.

1. One-Off Savings

• He likely saved £200–£300 million in inheritance tax when Queen Elizabeth II died, due to the monarchy-specific exemption.

I'm assuming @Dahliasrule that you don't employ your gardener for a solid 37.5 hour week. Maybe I'm wrong, but if she comes in for a day, or several hours a week it makes it very different than a full time job. She's running a business not pitching up every day as an employee.

She will also be allowing for the cost of down time between clients, travel time, advertising, time spent maintaining her tools, depreciation on tools and her van, waste disposal costs, PPE and the costs of gaining work i.e. quoting, visiting new clients etc.

Additionally she will be factoring in the costs of her previous experience, knowledge level, the quality of the end result she can provide and the training she has undertaken both in terms of time and money. Course and exam Fees to get you to stage 2 RHS qualification level are currently in excess of £5,000. The Royal Households sponsor training for professional qualifications.

Good gardeners are in short supply and know their worth. They won't work for less than their worth without good reason.

I think this thread is now going round in circles, with newer posters who haven't followed the discussion and haven't grasped that:

It's not KC who's allegedly paying the MW to the gardeners - it's a charity and possibly one which he's tried to help by giving them the use of Highgrove Gardens.

Of course those of us lucky enough to have a gardener (once a month for 2 hours because we're too decrepit nowadays!) pay them much more - because they have to cover their pension, NI, insurance, vehicle, tools etc. Employed gardeners have all this covered for them.

I hope that's fixed a few misunderstandings.

I'm very aware of bias and keep this in mind when reading The Times, The Guardian, The Mail, The Sun etc. It amuses me that, when I was a youngster, no-one on the left would have gone within a million miles of the Murdoch press because of his brutal policy towards the print unions. But because he's an avowed republican, it's fine now, I suppose. Or maybe they've forgotten Wapping? It makes me smile!

And Vera, I just don't get your anger against people with property or wealth. Why does is upset you so much? There'll always be rich people, and comparatively few of them will be self-made. The royals do in fact work in the way our democratic constitution asks them to. My God - KC will have to grit his teeth and host Trump in a month or two, so as far as I'm concerned, they earn it, and the fact that they live in nice houses and wear smart clothes just doesn't bother me at all. I don't get it!

We can get rid of the monarchy if we want to, and republicans know this - they're just angry because there doesn't seem to be the will to do so. Odd, when you consider we could have someone like Trump (or Farage). Oh but you can vote them out, I hear you say. Well...theoretically, but Trump is on his second term (and I was stunned that Americans voted him in for even his first) and his making moves to change the rules so he can have third, and then hand things over to young Barron. And this isn't a banana republic - it's the so-called leader of the Western World and the wealthiest 'democracy' on the planet.

Off topic, you might say. But then, as other pps have said, this thread isn't really about gardeners, or wages, is it? 😏

£5–7 million in corporation/capital gains/income tax on Duchy income.

The Duchy is taxed as if it were a partnership - i.e. all the income paid to the beneficiary is taxable as income in the benficiary’s hand's. Please do the comparison between the tax paid as a result of that treatment, and the tax that would be paid if the Duchy were taxed as a corporation and paying corporation tax (with presumably the same tax planning advantages that a corporation can use), and Charles being taxed on the basis that he is paid dividends rather than income. Because there is a difference.

You would imagine so rather than resorting to intemperate fury

There is absolutely no reported “intemperate fury” about the ragwort. Hyperbole much?

It would have saved a lot of time if OP had just been up-front and said: “I have a raging dislike of King Charles and I’ve found a stick to beat him with! Anyone for a spot of light bludgeoning?” instead of claiming faux concern for gardeners!

Indeed - the only reported episode that might be called 'intemperate fury' was the shouting by Innemeé, and the investigation did not make a clear finding about that.

"Nothing to see here, move along!"

I was at Grunwick and Wapping, on those massive picket lines in a previous life, defending so-called "Spanish practices" happy daze indeed. Old habits die hard. My beliefs are deeply entrenched, forged over a lifetime, and I suspect many of us of a mildly advanced age are the same. Different stripes, perhaps, but we’ll likely go to our graves carrying the same convictions we journeyed through life with.

I still have my "Stuff the Jubilee" badge somewhere buried in a box in the loft, along with the rest of my teenage relics I daren’t open.

That said, I do respect other people's views. Just last month I had a lovely reunion with old colleagues, including a former boss I once adored (and fought with, in equal measure). She received an OBE for her work on the Prime Minister’s Business Council back in Cameron’s day. Princess Anne presented it at the Palace.

They had to line up, remain motionless, and wear some sort of badge, if I recall correctly. But what really struck me was that when it was her turn, Princess Anne actually asked insightful, relevant questions about her work. It wasn’t just the usual “how naice” platitudes. So yes credit where it’s due. They’re not all bad.

But still. As we lurch toward a more divided, poorer, angrier country, with a diminished role in the world, the monarchy feels increasingly like an outdated spectacle. Extravagant, out of touch, still snouts-in-trough, while the rest of us face the cutbacks. It’s becoming a harder act to sell.

And it is an act, when all’s said and done. A carefully crafted pageant, built over centuries of often brutal consolidation, designed to launder the warlords and mafiosi who clawed their way to the top of the heap long ago.

Wat Tyler trusted the King and that was his fatal error. That lesson echoes down the centuries: never mistake the velvet glove for anything but a cover for the mailed fist beneath.

And here’s something else worth pausing over: members of the armed forces don’t swear allegiance to the country or its people they swear it to the monarch. Symbolic, perhaps, but symbols matter. It's a constitutional sleight of hand, a leftover from an age when the nation was seen as the private estate of a sovereign, not the collective will of its citizens. It reminds us, subtly but persistently, who the ultimate power is meant to serve and it isn’t us.

Anyone in the horse world would completely understand intemperate fury targeted at ragwort!

Talking of trust I don't think we've covered an aspect of the article that struck me as strange namely the binding legal agreement C made to preserve his access to Highgrove as and when W got his paws on the DoC.

Did he think W might sell it over his head as Linley did with his mother's beloved Caribbean retreat? If so, why?