Yahoo Finance Inside the honours application factories that can charge £50k
When the King’s birthday honours list is announced, the usual mix of A-listers and community champions will be anointed in a royal tradition that began almost a century ago.
While all applications follow the same format – an online form and two letters of support – not all are made equal. Along with those who have been nominated unawares, a growing cohort are enlisting the help of honours application writing services, some of which charge up to £50,000 a pop.
For that sum, “you get me”, says Mark Llewellyn-Slade, who runs Awards Intelligence. He set up the company 17 years ago – “we created this sector,” he says – and demand has grown year-on-year. Awards Intelligence now has 21 staff who have written more than 1,500 applications to date.
The Government doesn’t release data on the success rate for honours, which began in 1066 with Knights of the Bachelor and took their modern form in 1917, when George V introduced the Order of the British Empire.
These were typically awarded to senior military figures and aristocrats until 1993 when John Major encouraged regular folk to put themselves forward. Now, some 3,500 nominations are made by the public, with around 2,400 honours bestowed annually across the monarch’s birthday and New Year’s lists.
People can’t nominate themselves; their application must come from someone else. “The reality is that I would say over half of people who are being nominated for an honour know damn well they’re being put forward because they’re pulling the strings in the background,” says Llewellyn-Slade.
The prevailing estimate is that one in 10 applications succeed, he says; “our success rate, however, is two in three… so you’re about six and a half times more likely to succeed with our help”.
There are certain elements that make nominees a sure bet: those who have aided young people or social mobility; individuals instrumental in their communities; those who tackle discrimination or have risked their lives; entrepreneurs who have paid hefty taxes (Llewellyn-Slade adds that a rising swathe of his clients are tech founders).
“It’s not really good enough for someone to simply say, ‘oh, I’ve built a huge business, I employ 1,000 people, I’m worth a hundred million quid, and I’ve got five Ferraris and a house in Monte Carlo’. Really what it’s about is saying, yeah, I am very successful, and I now give a sizeable proportion of that away to good causes.”
There are also the actors, singers and assorted A-list folk who, apparently fed up with waiting, will pay in the hopes of expediting the process.
“We have helped numerous household-name people get on the list,” Llewellyn-Slade says.
Though they are perhaps the most likely to be able to cough up for additional application help, they are already known to the senior government figures who too suggest names for the honours list, unlike the many doing good work who would otherwise go unrecognised.
We must “take the time and trouble to nominate people that we feel are worthy,” Llewellyn-Slade says. “Because if we don’t, the Government will never know about them.”
Still, the longtime leader of the village WI or local kids’ football team coach of decades’ standing are unlikely to be paying for these premium services. The starting price for independent honours application writers is around £2,000; at firms like Bayleaf, tiered plans rise to £9,995, with an additional £6,995 payable if you get an honour.
At Awards Intelligence, pricing for its royal residence-named plans starts at £4,900 plus VAT, with the top rate 10 times higher.
Application writers estimate that each takes between 100 and 150 hours, with their service including the writing of the application and gathering of letters of support (plus, typically, unlimited support via phone and email from the company).
Fees rise depending on the length of nomination, number of letters (in some cases, more than 20) and face-to-face meetings people plump for.
But those who decide who gets honours are critical. Two years ago, Sir Hugh Robertson, chairman of the Sports Honours Committee, said paying a company to submit an application is the “last thing you should do” and that they can “spot the polished ones”.
He added: “If this has been written by a group of local volunteers in their community you know it’s people who got together because they really want to do something. They are written with passion, not polish.”
If people can pay their way in – those that do “are invariably financially successful,” according to Llewellyn-Slade – doesn’t it make the system somewhat unequal? “That’s just the reality of life,” he says. “With money comes choice.”
That’s true, though some who have earned the honour understandably feel that the way they have been secured makes a difference. Debbie Anne Turnbull received an MBE after setting up River And Sea Sense (RASS), a non-profit educating people about the dangers of open water following the death of her son.
“I received mine fair and square – no idea who from,” she says. Turnbull was dimly aware of the application-writing industry, though never tempted herself. “It takes away [from] the absolute honour and privilege of those who receive theirs unawares,” she thinks.
Not everyone given an honour wants one: the likes of Lucian Freud, David Hockney, David Bowie and Ken Loach turned theirs down (LS Lowry declined four honours on five separate occasions, which is thought to be a record). Sometimes they are shunned until the honoree is awarded something bigger.
Dame Helen Mirren declined a CBE but accepted a damehood in 2003; Alfred Hitchcock and Kenneth Branagh the same (their knighthoods were awarded in 1979 and 2012 respectively). While Hitchcock received his honour four months before his death, other hold-outs have fallen foul of timing.
Evelyn Waugh refused a CBE, believing he deserved a knighthood; Roald Dahl, who turned down an OBE, is thought to have done so for the same reason. Both died without an official honour.
Those who enlist professional services to help them get an honour are likely far less discerning about what they get – but the companies themselves have strict standards.
Jenevieve Horscraft, who has been running Honours List IQ since 2018, only takes on clients where “the nominee stands a good chance of success.”
“I’m not going to take on anyone who wants to put their neighbour forward because they’ve done their shopping for 20 years. As much as that’s a wonderful thing to do, it’s not going to get you an honour.”
While Llewellyn-Slade says he advertises “extensively” for new business, he has no interest in taking on clients for the sake of it either. “As many people as we say yes to, we say no to… if we start putting no-hopers forward for these kinds of things, our success rate won’t be two in three for very long.”
Turning people away has in fact been good for the coffers, he adds. “The higher the quality of the people that we actually take on [that] results in a higher success rate, which means we attract even more high quality people and it enables us to put our prices up.”
Business remains healthy now, while honours are still considered a fairly select privilege. As time wears on, can they – and the outfits charging top whack for application help – retain their lustre? Llewellyn-Slade believes so.
“The majority of people are impressed by those that have a royal honour,” he says. “I think it’s widely regarded as being the most prestigious award in the world.”
