Board overseeing Houses of Parliament restoration recommends £3bn package of works to start this year

The body overseeing the restoration of the Houses of Parliament has recommended a £3bn package of initial works which it said should start as early as this year.

The client board said it wants to launch a procurement process in 2026 for one or more strategic partners to carry out the seven-year job, which could include the construction of temporary chambers for the House of Commons and the House of Lords.

The appointed delivery partner or partners would work on design, technical and construction of the first phase, with the client body currently drawing up a commercial strategy for the programme which could see partners continue working on later phases.

The work would also see preparations for the restoration of Parliament’s medieval Cloister Court, an interior refurbishment of Victoria Tower, the start of underground works and the construction of a river jetty for construction deliveries.

In a 128-page report published today, the client board also advised slimming down a set of four proposals for the restoration of the grade I-listed building to two ahead of a final decision by MPs in mid-2030.

It said the benefits of the so-called ‘continued presence’ scheme, which would keep the House of Commons in various locations within the Palace of Westminster during the course of the works, were outweighed by its challenges.

The report also advised scrapping the ‘enhanced maintenance and improvement’ (EMI) option, which would retain both Houses of Parliament in situ during the works but could take up to 84 years to complete and would have the highest overall cost at up to £19.4bn.

All options would have lengthy construction times and would disrupt the normal activities of Parliament, with the quickest remaining option, a ‘full decant’ in which both Houses would relocate during the works, taking between 19 and 24 years and costing up to £11.5bn.

The report’s other recommended option, EMI+, which would see the House of Lords move to new premises for eight to 13 years while the Commons would relocate to the Lords, would take between 38 and 61 years to complete and cost up to £18.7bn.

All options would require some form of temporary accommodation for both houses and parliamentary support offices, with the Commons expected to move to the Northern Estate on Whitehall and the Lords expected to relocate to the QEII Conference Centre.

The client board said its report marked “significant progress” towards the start of the restoration programme but warned that work needed to start as soon as possible to minimise costs.

The body has estimated that the cost of delaying the programme’s delivery is around £70m year of additional reactive maintenance costs, which increased by 70% between 2021/22 and 2023/24 and are currently around £1.5m per week.

It added that the overall cost of the restoration would increase by between £250m and £350m each year for each year of delay because of construction cost inflation.

There has been no major renovation of Parliament since 1950 with many of the building’s services pre-dating this. Since 2016, there have been 36 fire incidents within Parliament, 12 asbestos incidients and 19 stonemasonry incidents.