Buckingham Palace is to undergo a £369m 10-year refurbishment, in which the Queen will remain in residence during the work, to begin next April.
Ageing cables, lead pipes, wiring and boilers will be replaced, many for the first time in 60 years, amid fears about potential fire and water damage.
Tony Johnstone-Burt, Master of the Queen’s Household, said phased works offered the “best value for money” while keeping the palace running. The Royal Trustees, who include the prime minister and chancellor, recommended that the works be funded by a temporary increase in the Sovereign Grant.
Profits from the independent property business Crown Estates go to the Treasury, which in turn gives 15% of the sum to the monarch in the form of the Sovereign Grant, which this year totalled nearly £43m.
The trustees say the grant should rise to 25% of the profits for the repairs. This would require MPs’ approval.
The Treasury said an “urgent overhaul” of the palace was needed to prevent the risk of fire, flood and damage to both the building and the priceless royal collection of art belonging to the nation.
Pointing to the damage Windsor Castle had suffered from a fire in 1992, the Treasury said: “The restoration took more than five years, and it is estimated that similar damage to Buckingham Palace could cost up to £250m for a single wing.”
According to the Royal Household, the palace’s boilers are more than 33 years old and spare parts for them are difficult to source.
Much of the wiring is considered to carry a “very real risk of fire and failure”, while the majority of the mechanical and electrical systems are at least 40 years old with failure an “ever increasing risk”, it said.
Image: Janis Lacis/Dreamstime.com
Comments
Comments are closed.
Buckingham Palace always has been an ugly eyesore of little architectural merit. Now it seems also to be a dilapidated eyesore to boot. We should not waste taxpayer’s money refurbishing this crumbling pile. It is better demolished and the land given over to a national project more beneficial to the nation’s capital and its people. The current occupiers can simply go and live in one of their many other palaces.
Furthermore, this being a government project, the out-turn cost will be at least double and probably quadruple what is currently tabled. We expect this. But even so, these costs appear to be deliberately under forecast in order to render them palateable. How come it costs four times as much per square foot to refurbish the Palace of Westminster than it supposedly does to refurbish Buck House? Both buildings are from the same era & are of the same type, therefore we should expect refurb costs to be on a par. There is something fishy here. We are not being advised the proper cost facts.
Not an ‘Anti Royalist’, but why are the ‘taxpayers’ expected to foot the bill to repair the home of one of the world’s richest women/families? Shouldn’t she/they be told they should have been saving for the repairs out of the ‘Sovereign Grant’ or other monies they receive – that’s what people on benefits get told.
Malc Jeffs – I’m not involved in either project, but with a moment’s reflection you would realise it is quite unrealistic to compare the refurbishment costs of the two buildings. Just being from the same era does not make them the same – the Palace of Westminster is a massively complex, fully-utilised space, occupied by several thousand people for almost all of any given 24 hours. Any works there will have to be undertaken in bite-sized spaces with complex phasing and decanting arrangements, to maintain operation to the remainder of the building and minimising noise and other disruption caused by the works (e.g. access routes, storage provisions, diversions and temporary services, etc.) – probably with a great deal of working out-of-hours, limited access windows, etc., all bound by a tight programme.
Buckingham Palace, on the other hand, is a far easier prospect to tackle – it is not so densely occupied and much of the works can probably take place during normal working hours without causing unacceptable degrees of noise and disruption. The gardens at the rear might offer on-site storage and offices for the contractors, mitigating some of the logistical problems associated with working in city-centre sites. Decanting will be less complex, and the ten year programme gives flexibility for the works to be planned in a more efficient manner, using decanting and long term occupation for full repairs rather than being limited to short-term nibbles at the work, with much time wasted in preparing the worksite before, and making safe afterwards, necessitating revisits to do a bit more.
As for the merit – you may not think much of Buckingham Palace, but it’s a world-famous landmark, on the visiting itinerary of the majority of the tourists who come to the UK. We should be proud of our history, and preserve it, rather than wishing to knock it down and build some new monstrosity in its place. What caught my eye is that the Crown Estate is operated as an independent property company, paying 15% of its profits to the Queen with the rest going to the Treasury – effectively an 85% tax rate. Seems only reasonable to me that Her Majesty should be given a rebate to her tax rate to allow her to pay for essential works to such a significant part of Britain’s heritage.
Bearing in mind that Buckingham Palace is the residence of the Head of State, where exactly would people have it be if it was knocked down and a replacement is thus needed?
AlexC – thanks for your in-depth comments – I’m sure that you are mostly correct. In terms of out-turn cost, let us see what this will be when the works are finally completed. I believe the numbers are under-cooked in order to make the project palateable.
Charles, we don’t require a replacement. Let them live in Windsor castle – one of the many other available residences of the head of state.