Historic Royal Palace was initially a government established charity organization in the United Kingdom. It was established originally in 1989 as the Environmental Department executive agency to care for the five royal palaces. In 1998, the agency became an independent charity which was then caring for the UK’s unoccupied royal palaces including Hampton Court Palace, Tower of London, Kensington Palace, Key Palace, the Banqueting House and the Hillsborough Castle. This was set up by the State Secretary for Media, Culture, and Sport to help the Queen in managing the states (Alexander, Alexander, and Decker, 2017). The main aim of the Historic Royal Palaces is to help everyone in the exploration of the way the people and monarchs have shaped the society in a number of ways in the ever built greatest palaces.
Every royal palace among the six palaces that are in the care of this independent charity has now survived for over hundreds of years. The palaces have witnessed prosperity and peace and the superb periods of expansion and building. They have as well shared many stories about politics and revolution, about domestic strife and war, and about the more turbulent times. The Historic Royal Palaces does not receive any funds from the government to help in its operation. It raises its fund as well as depend on the support of the visitors, donors, its members, volunteers and the sponsors (Alexander, Alexander, and Decker, 2017). The currently occupied royal palaces like Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace are cared by the Royal Household Property Section, and some of them are even open to the general public.
Historic Royal Palaces is tasked with the job of ensuring the protection of the palaces and the palaces’ life. This is achieved through various ways including unravelling, debating and continuing the palaces story, helping the people to touch, see as well as understand it and how it works, and helping everyone in finding their meanings (Buchanan " Huczniski, 2017). It also achieves it through helping them in making the history where the history was already made as well as reflecting the Britain people story and also protecting it to the worlds people.
The independent charity has four basic principles which govern its operation. These four principles are divided into two; the guardianship and the discovery. The Guardianship contains three principles which are to ensure that the historic royal palaces exist even tomorrow but not just yesterday, to task itself in giving the palaces under its care a valuable future just as their past and to preserve the precious nature of the palaces and the contents in them to the best standards they always deserve. The discovery has one principle which is to give an explanation of the bigger picture about itself and to encourage the people in making their discoveries especially in finding their own lives links with the today's’ world.
The mission of the historic royal palaces is to showcase a number of the ever built greatest palaces to conserve their future generations and to bring their specific stories to life. It treasures the extraordinary old tales and recognizes that they need to be told and be re-told for the many years to come. To make this possible, it relies on its supporter’s generosity from their online supporters to their donors, members, and visitors (Wetherley " Otter, 2014). However, they also strive to protect their supporters’ wishes, to protest all the information they give them and to inspire them with the palaces, the stories and the specific work they do to ensure they preserve them. Its promise to all of its supporters is to inspire their interests, to protect any information they give it, to work collaboratively with all of its supporters and to treat all of its supporters with the respect they deserve.
Historic royal palaces in governed by the Board of Trustee, of which all are non-executive, and they are tasked to promote the historic royal palaces’ Cause in the whole world. The trustees work in the best interest of the organization to ensure that the work done is of a high standard and that the resources and money used are effective as much as possible. The Chief Executive is the one accountable to all Board of Trustees for the Historic Royal Palaces performance as well as the parliament for the care of the public assets, and he chairs the Executive Board of a total of eight directors (Mallin, 2016). The Board of Trustees contains the chairperson and eleven trustees. All the appointments are not paid, and the trustees are selected carefully considering their ability to support the work of Historic Royal Palaces.
The Queen appoints the chairperson following the advice from the Secretary of State for Media, Culture, and Sport. The queen then appoints four trustees from which three of them are the ex officio appointments including Lord Chamberlain, the keeper of the Privy Purse and the Director, Royal Collection Trust. In case Lord Chamberlain chooses to renounce his appointment, the Queen appoints someone else to take up his position. The Secretary of State appoints the seven remaining Trustees whereby two of them become the ex officio including the Chairman of the Historic Royal Palace Campaign Board and the Constable of the Tower of London.
Historic Royal Palaces have various policies governing its operations including equality and diversity policy, safeguarding policy, modern slavery act statement, freedom of information, immunity from seizure and collections and conversations policies. According to the Gender Pay Gap Report 2016/2017, the general HRP’s report indicate that Historic Royal Palaces had an average pay gap that was below the national gender gap pay which is usually 18.1% (HRP, 2017). however, the aim is to reduce the gap and have none at all therefore there is a plan to take various actions including improvement of the Executive Team gender balance. The others include continuation of the female talent support to bring organizational progress and also doing future recruitment in gender diversity improvement in the role which can be seen as basically feminine or masculine.
Observation of the corporate governance standards of this independent organization is important because it makes the appointed personnel work willingly for the best of the organization. Through such willingness, the agency is likely to achieve its set objectives within the stipulated time and maintain the standards of service it has set. Observation of the governance standards also ensures that all organs of the agency competitively work well to ensure the best is achieved. Through this, the supporters can have an easy time to understand how it works and take the initiative to assist where they feel they need to help in improving its performance.
In conclusion, the Historic Royal Palaces is an agency that has organized itself to inspire the people through the history to have better future lives. It has various legislative modes of operation that make it ensure that the law is not violated and all the collaborative partners it works with including the visitors and the sponsors are not mistreated, or their values violate but rather get satisfied and inspired. I can say the agency is working for the best interest of preserving the world's culture for the future generation, which a high recommendable job. I appreciate the effort put in place by the agency in serving the public and I can encourage it to put on extra efforts to ensure that the precious ancient tales and lifestyle is reserved without distortion to promote the ancient beauty in the future generations.
References
Alexander, E.P., Alexander, M. and Decker, J., 2017. Museums in motion: An introduction to the history and functions of museums. Rowman " Littlefield.
Buchanan " Huczniski. (2017). Organisational Behaviour. FT Prentice Hall
HRP, 2017. Historic Royal Palaces. [Online] Available at: www.hrp.org.uk [Accessed 15 December 2017].
Mallin, C. (2016). Corporate Governance. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Wetherley " Otter. (2014). The Business Environment. Themes and issues in a globalizing world. Oxford: Oxford University Press
