British Parliament Set to Relocate to Save a Crumbling Palace
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Version 0 of 1. LONDON — With the iconic Palace of Westminster, Britain’s seat of Parliament, crumbling dangerously after decades of neglect, legislators moved a step closer on Thursday to agreeing on a plan for renovation, which includes vacating the entire building for at least six years. With leaky roofs and pipes, antiquated wiring, crumbling limestone, asbestos and rats, the building faces “an impending crisis which we cannot responsibly ignore,” and a growing risk of a “catastrophic event, such as a major fire,” according to a report by a joint committee of the House of Commons and House of Lords released on Thursday. The committee recommended that both houses of Parliament move to other nearby buildings in 2022 to expedite repairs. That would mean relocating about 2,000 people. The report follows a Deloitte study commissioned by Parliament last year which estimated that, with the building empty, the necessary renovations and improvements — including weatherproofing thousands of windows — would cost about 3.9 billion pounds, or about $5.2 billion. “We can’t put off the decision to act any longer if we are to protect one of the most important and iconic parts of our national heritage,” said Tina Stowell, a member of the House of Lords and one of the committee’s leaders. While the first royal palace on the site and Westminster Hall were built in the 11th century, most of the current neo-Gothic building is not ancient at all. It was finished around 1870 after 30 years of construction, cost overruns and the deaths of the main architects. But modernization has been haphazard: the local limestone that was used is crumbling from more than a century of rain and air pollution, and no detailed blueprints exist for the building’s maze of plumbing and wiring. The palace has about 1,100 rooms, 100 staircases and nearly three miles of passageways over four floors. Emergency repairs currently cost about £50 million a year. Part of the conundrum has been what to do with the legislators themselves, who have only abandoned the building once before, after it was bombed during World War II. The committee proposed putting the House of Lords into the government-owned Queen Elizabeth II conference center across the street from Westminster Abbey. The House of Commons, it said, could work from a nearby government building, the Richmond House, which currently hosts the Department of Health. Some members of the House of Commons were originally opposed to any move to Richmond House, in large part because consuming alcohol there is supposedly banned. The lease on the building is part of an Islamic bond, or sukuk, which prohibits alcohol on the premises. Some parliamentarians have suggested, perhaps in jest, nationalizing a nearby pub, The Red Lion. But, to ease the alcohol restriction, it now appears that the Richmond House lease could be replaced in the bond with another building. They will still, however, need a location to serve as a debating chamber. Any move must be agreed upon in a vote by both houses. But the new prime minister, Theresa May, is considered unlikely to oppose a move, despite the cost, and votes are expected before Christmas. |