> Restoring parliament without a full decant of MPs could take up to 76 years, while the bill for repairs would stretch to £22bn, a new report by the body set up to investigate how the project should be handled has found.
> MPs, peers and senior parliamentary officials are still split on the best way to proceed with extensive works to the Victorian building given safety concerns about crumbling masonry, the lack of protection against flooding and decades-old electrical wiring.
> Under the most recent plan, MPs were expected to move to Richmond House, the former home of the Department of Health, while the Palace of Westminster – with a floor plate the size of 16 football pitches and containing 1,100 rooms, 100 staircases and 3 miles of passageways – is being restored. **However, the idea was abandoned last year.**
> The cheapest plan involved a full decant of the Palace of Westminster, for between 12 and 20 years, with the work costing in the region of £7bn to £13bn.
> With MPs elsewhere for much of the time, the report estimated the works would take between 19 and 28 years.
> In one scenario, business would remain within the Commons chamber “until such a point is reached whereby all operations are transferred to another space within the Palace of Westminster (assumed to be the House of Lords chamber), to allow the rest of the work to proceed”.
> It estimated this would increase restoration costs to between £9.5bn and £18.5bn, taking 26 to 43 years.
> And in a third possible scenario, which would cost the most and take the longest, business would remain within the chamber “throughout the entirety of the restoration and renewal programme of works” with “no transfer”.
> It is estimated this would cost between £11bn and £22bn and take in the region of 46 to 76 years. This was conditional on recess being extended to scrap the three-week return for MPs between their summer and party conference breaks, so that there was no parliamentary business for four months, from mid-July to mid-October.
> **The figures do not take into account inflation, meaning the true cost over several decades would likely be billions more expensive, given compound interest**
The previous idea was abandoned because Rees-Mogg got into his head that parliament should never even consider meeting anywhere else because tradition, basically. IIRC the official reason was up front costs, but the ongoing costs and the length of time it takes make a mockery of that argument.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if these eejits can’t agree to do the work which is obviously necessary to fix the place, they deserve to have it fall down on top of them.
76 years? Isn’t that just called maintenance rather than a renovation at that point?
Phew. Thank god the country has wasted billions recently, and have the money for it…
Put em in old train carriages up north somewhere. Like they do to schools and hospitals.
Just waiting for some Tory politician’s brother to set up a brand new renovation company before the project gets awarded to them.
Surely you could build two new buildings fit for both houses in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the price.
The Houses of Parliament are a really nice building complex but £11-£22 billion for a restoration?
For comparison The Shard skyscraper cost £1.2bn, London City Hall cost £43 million, the Scottish Parliament building cost £414 million… Honestly we should probably just build something new if we are going to spend that much.
Just build something new and turn the old place into a museum.
Move parliament – if they want to truly Level Up the north move it north. Repair the building and then lease it out to different homeless charities.
Wouldn’t it be cheaper just to knock it down and build a better building fit for the 21st century?
Build it new in Derby, land is cheaper and investment would do some good. Also make a hotel for MPs who need it, no second homes at all.
22bn? Lord….that’s so much you could pay for massive amounts of covid fraud or something silly like that
I’m lost for words. The ruling elite is so out of touch.
Eyewatering numbers, both. They look like someone fucked up an excel formula and the results have multplied around a loop a few times.
This makes the £2.6mill spent on painting the wall of the press briefing room blue seem insignificant
Just for comparison , the Welsh assembly budget is about 20bn for one year.
The political elite are taking the piss out of us at this point. Bet they won’t show open receipts for all the “renovations”.
£22 million if carries doesn’t choose the wallpaper and fittings.
Fuck this, build a new parliament, use current one as a tourist/museum attraction and use the money it makes to pay for it
>At Business Questions on 16 September 2021, the Leader of the House announced that the House would be considering a motion to appoint an external member of the Parliamentary Works Sponsor Body on Wednesday 22 September. Thangam Debbonaire asked the Leader of the House whether he now agreed that “we must press ahead with a full decant”. Jacob ReesMogg told her that:
>
>
>
>It is well recognised that work needs to be carried out and that we need to replumb and re-wire. We have already done a huge amount of work ensuring that the fire safety systems are improved, and we had a successful fire safety test earlier this week to ensure that the structure of the building and the lives within the building are safe. The work is planned and I am supporting it enthusiastically. [Source](https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-8968/CBP-8968.pdf), page 9
Surely JRM would be more in favour of saving a lot of money by asking MPs to use ***common sense*** rather than these expensive renovations, no?
How the fuck? I… is it just one man doing it all? Or is it because of pisspoor management, somehow turning it from what should be a short term project into a bloated mess and yeah, it’s that.
​
It’ll be cheaper to build a new house of parliment but why do that when they can blow billions of cash and deny said billions to the north?
​
Just shut it down, use a government building as a temporary solution. Hell, most MPs barely work there if it’s not something that they can use to keep their voters or it affects their wages, expenses etc..
Give it to the national trust for the tourists. Only fix up the pretty parts they see on TV. Seal off the rest and fix the facade.
Parliament should be up the road in a semi circle debating chamber with electronic voting and cut out all the traditional baggage.
Actors in the old chamber could re-enact
the war time government. Johnson can do his Churchill tribute act.
76? That’s oddly specific for such a long term projection.
The cost itemised looks like this…
Tin of Dulux paint for the bathroom -£12
Service fees to Conservative owned businesses – 22bn
Keep Big Ben, and maybe some other significant part of it. The rest, rip it down and put up a modern building.
We can build something impressive for £22bn
Its only a matter of time before there’s a serious fire.
Move parliament somewhere centrally in England if they even want to have a hope of quelling Scottish independence.
If it can’t be salvaged as a building at an affordable rate then sell it off to the highest bidder. £22 billion is £44 billion in Tory money. Let’s not fall for that old trick.
Tradition should not stop progress and if this is the point in time we can say “okay well that’s too pricey” then it’s time to move on.
the more talk about the state of parliament, the more reasons to move it to wigan.
turn it into a bullshit free zone and charge mps 15 quid a day to use it
30 comments
> Restoring parliament without a full decant of MPs could take up to 76 years, while the bill for repairs would stretch to £22bn, a new report by the body set up to investigate how the project should be handled has found.
> MPs, peers and senior parliamentary officials are still split on the best way to proceed with extensive works to the Victorian building given safety concerns about crumbling masonry, the lack of protection against flooding and decades-old electrical wiring.
> Under the most recent plan, MPs were expected to move to Richmond House, the former home of the Department of Health, while the Palace of Westminster – with a floor plate the size of 16 football pitches and containing 1,100 rooms, 100 staircases and 3 miles of passageways – is being restored. **However, the idea was abandoned last year.**
> The cheapest plan involved a full decant of the Palace of Westminster, for between 12 and 20 years, with the work costing in the region of £7bn to £13bn.
> With MPs elsewhere for much of the time, the report estimated the works would take between 19 and 28 years.
> In one scenario, business would remain within the Commons chamber “until such a point is reached whereby all operations are transferred to another space within the Palace of Westminster (assumed to be the House of Lords chamber), to allow the rest of the work to proceed”.
> It estimated this would increase restoration costs to between £9.5bn and £18.5bn, taking 26 to 43 years.
> And in a third possible scenario, which would cost the most and take the longest, business would remain within the chamber “throughout the entirety of the restoration and renewal programme of works” with “no transfer”.
> It is estimated this would cost between £11bn and £22bn and take in the region of 46 to 76 years. This was conditional on recess being extended to scrap the three-week return for MPs between their summer and party conference breaks, so that there was no parliamentary business for four months, from mid-July to mid-October.
> **The figures do not take into account inflation, meaning the true cost over several decades would likely be billions more expensive, given compound interest**
The previous idea was abandoned because Rees-Mogg got into his head that parliament should never even consider meeting anywhere else because tradition, basically. IIRC the official reason was up front costs, but the ongoing costs and the length of time it takes make a mockery of that argument.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if these eejits can’t agree to do the work which is obviously necessary to fix the place, they deserve to have it fall down on top of them.
76 years? Isn’t that just called maintenance rather than a renovation at that point?
Phew. Thank god the country has wasted billions recently, and have the money for it…
Put em in old train carriages up north somewhere. Like they do to schools and hospitals.
Just waiting for some Tory politician’s brother to set up a brand new renovation company before the project gets awarded to them.
Surely you could build two new buildings fit for both houses in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the price.
The Houses of Parliament are a really nice building complex but £11-£22 billion for a restoration?
For comparison The Shard skyscraper cost £1.2bn, London City Hall cost £43 million, the Scottish Parliament building cost £414 million… Honestly we should probably just build something new if we are going to spend that much.
Just build something new and turn the old place into a museum.
Move parliament – if they want to truly Level Up the north move it north. Repair the building and then lease it out to different homeless charities.
Wouldn’t it be cheaper just to knock it down and build a better building fit for the 21st century?
Build it new in Derby, land is cheaper and investment would do some good. Also make a hotel for MPs who need it, no second homes at all.
22bn? Lord….that’s so much you could pay for massive amounts of covid fraud or something silly like that
I’m lost for words. The ruling elite is so out of touch.
Eyewatering numbers, both. They look like someone fucked up an excel formula and the results have multplied around a loop a few times.
This makes the £2.6mill spent on painting the wall of the press briefing room blue seem insignificant
Just for comparison , the Welsh assembly budget is about 20bn for one year.
The political elite are taking the piss out of us at this point. Bet they won’t show open receipts for all the “renovations”.
£22 million if carries doesn’t choose the wallpaper and fittings.
Fuck this, build a new parliament, use current one as a tourist/museum attraction and use the money it makes to pay for it
>At Business Questions on 16 September 2021, the Leader of the House announced that the House would be considering a motion to appoint an external member of the Parliamentary Works Sponsor Body on Wednesday 22 September. Thangam Debbonaire asked the Leader of the House whether he now agreed that “we must press ahead with a full decant”. Jacob ReesMogg told her that:
>
>
>
>It is well recognised that work needs to be carried out and that we need to replumb and re-wire. We have already done a huge amount of work ensuring that the fire safety systems are improved, and we had a successful fire safety test earlier this week to ensure that the structure of the building and the lives within the building are safe. The work is planned and I am supporting it enthusiastically. [Source](https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-8968/CBP-8968.pdf), page 9
Surely JRM would be more in favour of saving a lot of money by asking MPs to use ***common sense*** rather than these expensive renovations, no?
How the fuck? I… is it just one man doing it all? Or is it because of pisspoor management, somehow turning it from what should be a short term project into a bloated mess and yeah, it’s that.
​
It’ll be cheaper to build a new house of parliment but why do that when they can blow billions of cash and deny said billions to the north?
​
Just shut it down, use a government building as a temporary solution. Hell, most MPs barely work there if it’s not something that they can use to keep their voters or it affects their wages, expenses etc..
Give it to the national trust for the tourists. Only fix up the pretty parts they see on TV. Seal off the rest and fix the facade.
Parliament should be up the road in a semi circle debating chamber with electronic voting and cut out all the traditional baggage.
Actors in the old chamber could re-enact
the war time government. Johnson can do his Churchill tribute act.
76? That’s oddly specific for such a long term projection.
The cost itemised looks like this…
Tin of Dulux paint for the bathroom -£12
Service fees to Conservative owned businesses – 22bn
Keep Big Ben, and maybe some other significant part of it. The rest, rip it down and put up a modern building.
We can build something impressive for £22bn
Its only a matter of time before there’s a serious fire.
Move parliament somewhere centrally in England if they even want to have a hope of quelling Scottish independence.
If it can’t be salvaged as a building at an affordable rate then sell it off to the highest bidder. £22 billion is £44 billion in Tory money. Let’s not fall for that old trick.
Tradition should not stop progress and if this is the point in time we can say “okay well that’s too pricey” then it’s time to move on.
the more talk about the state of parliament, the more reasons to move it to wigan.
turn it into a bullshit free zone and charge mps 15 quid a day to use it