The Firm: The Troubled Life of the House of Windsor by Penny Junor Page B

department called Property Services which covered not just the maintenance but everything involved in running the occupied royal palaces, from heating and cleaning them to mowing the lawns, training personnel and meeting fire, health and safety regulations. All of this had been farmed out many years before to the Department of the Environment (which became and is now the Department for Culture, Media and Sport) and they were spending over £20 million on the palaces. Peat and Airlie reckoned they could do it more cost-effectively themselves. It was yet another cry to be masters of their own destiny. They knew the buildings, knew what they wanted and knew whether a tap worked or not; why not take it over? And so once again they stuck their necks out. It was a mammoth undertaking, and, as they are the first to acknowledge in retrospect, quite brave. They had no expertise and, apart from the odd plumberon the books, no manpower; and there are a lot of occupied palaces – Buckingham Palace, St James’s Palace, Clarence House and Marlborough House Mews, the residential and office areas of Kensington Palace, the Royal Mews and Royal Paddocks at Hampton Court and Windsor Castle and buildings in the Home and Great Parks at Windsor. But they pulled it off. They effectively started up a brand-new business, contracted out some of the services such as cleaning, took on staff for other jobs, employed specialists and, while reducing the amount that was spent on the palaces, nevertheless carried out a huge number of improvements and came in well under budget. It was, and still is, paid for by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport by way of Grant-in-Aid, but the savings and improved efficiency have continued. For the last five years funding has remained at £15 million – savings of around £50 million since Peat took it over in March 1991.
    By the time Michael Peat was due to return to Peat Marwick McLintock (by now renamed KPMG), in 1993, there was a great deal going on in which he was heavily involved. Fire had devastated Windsor Castle; another new department – Royal Enterprises, the trading arm of the Royal Collection – was just coming on-stream; there were plans for Royal Travel, Communications and the Historic Royal Palaces – all changes that he had recommended in his report – and he was far too busy to leave. KPMG, who had been paying him a very generous partnership share all the while, began to get restless and Peat had to make a choice: to stay at the Palace and see through what he had begun, or go back to a very lucrative number in the City and amass a fortune for his declining years. To his family’s chagrin he opted to stay, becoming Keeper of the Privy Purse, and has so far resisted all enticements to return. Indeed, in 2003 he took on the ultimate challenge and becamePrivate Secretary to the Prince of Wales, just in time to field the fallout from the Burrell trial.
    Peat is not universally liked; he is frequently described as lacking charisma, being a faceless accountant, a cold fish; but new brooms are seldom liked and it’s too easy to attach damning labels. He was effecting radical change in a cosy, hierarchical environment and interfering with working practices that no one has questioned for decades. He disturbed some well-feathered nests. No wonder he upset a few people along the way. As he has been heard to say, ‘We changed a huge amount in terms of the head; whether we changed the heart I don’t know.’ The heart was easier to change in those areas where staff were better educated, among those who come into the Palace in administrative posts – finance, press, property, private secretaries – but it was more difficult to change the heart in the domestic areas, the Mews, the Master of the Household’s department, areas where there was a very strong military background.
    Educated at Eton and Oxford, Peat is tall and slim, a year younger than the Prince of Wales and two years younger than Robin