The National Audit Office (NAO) has assessed the options for restoring the Houses of Parliament, with estimates ranging from £11-£39bn
A new report on options for the restoration of the Houses of Parliament has detailed two options recommended by the NAO.
The first option is a full decant, which will cost £11.1 – £15.6bn and take 19–24 years, or Enhanced Maintenance and Improvement plus (EMI+) costing £19.5bn – £39.2bn, and taking 38–64 years.
There are serious risks at the site
The Houses of Parliament are a UNESCO World Heritage site and a Grade I listed building. The issues throughout the building have been widely reported on and the options have been under proposal since 2024.
The issues include mechanical and electrical systems risking failure, fire safety issues, and the presence of asbestos.
The report states that further delays to making a decision will risk value for money, and every year of delay could add £320m-£420m to the overall cost of the programme, and so rapid action is recommended alongside a programme of ‘Phase One’ enabling works at up to £3bn.
If the full decant option is chosen, temporary accommodation will be required to allow the government to continue operating while work is undertaken.
The NAO emphasises that, while the recommended options have been through the full process of development and internal and external checks, they are all still subject to change in cost and schedule as the programme develops.
They also make the following recommendations for responsible delivery:
- Publish and regularly update a clear, non-technical summary, potentially alongside its business case, akin to Strategy and Delivery Plans used for mega-projects
- Provide cost estimate ranges for all ‘Phase One’ work packages and set out how interdependencies between key projects will be managed
- Ensure that links and decision-making responsibilities between projects across the Programme and related work on the Parliamentary estate are managed through a single, integrated delivery plan
- Work with MPs and Lords at speed to create a clear vision for how each House, and Parliament as a whole, will operate in their temporary accommodation
- Review the Programme’s governance arrangements to set clear requirements and hold those delivering to account
Acting on recommendations
Earlier this year, the Restoration and Renewal (R&R) Client Board published a report advising members of parliament to begin restoration work this year, at a cost of £3bn.
Their proposed process, at a cost much lower than the more recent NAO predictions, was as follows:
- Full decant: where both Houses move out of the Palace of Westminster for the majority of the works
- Continued presence: where the House of Lords would move out for the duration of the main works and the Commons Chamber and its essential support functions (for example key procedural services) would remain in the Palace of Westminster. We recommend that this option should not be further developed because its challenges — including the extended decant periods for both Chambers — outweigh its benefits compared with the other delivery options.
- Enhanced maintenance and improvement (EMI): under which broadly not more than 30% of the Palace of Westminster (by usable area) would be decanted at any one time. The Palace of Westminster would be split into 14 zones which would be worked on in stages: functions of both Houses would be decanted for periods to facilitate this. Two variants of the EMI option have been assessed:
- EMI: this variant had the ambition of seeking to retain both Chambers in place throughout the Programme, with any work on the Chambers taking place in recesses and out-of-hours. The variant is set out in this report but following a recommendation by the Programme Board we recommend that it should not be further developed. It would have had a high cost together with the longest duration of any option; and
- EMI+: under this variant, the House of Lords would be decanted for 8 to 13 years while the Commons, subject to the Lords’ agreement, would be decanted to the Lords Chamber for up to two years.
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