Princess Bea’s palace pad is branded a death trap

PRINCE ANDREW is keen for Princess Beatrice to move out of St James’s Palace to grander accommodation at Kensington Palace — and now he has even more reason to get hot under the collar.

St James’s Palace, where Beatrice lives in a four-bedroom apartment, is considered a potential fire trap, with ‘serious flaws’ that could put its royal occupants’ lives at risk.

Surveyors acting for the Royal Household have identified more than 100 fire safety hazards at the 16th-century palace.

More than 20 of the hazards are considered ‘high risk’, including a potential fire route ‘from the rear of [the] princesses’ flats’.

The Princess Royal and Princess Alexandra also have homes in St James’s Palace, and luxury apartments have been rented to the public for up to £20,000 a month.

But a new report, by AHP Architects, says the fire safety flaws pose a ‘significant health risk to the palace’s occupants’.

The report says: ‘Recent surveys of the stairs and walkways have revealed serious flaws in many areas, which have the potential to endanger the users.’

It adds that the palace’s rooftop walkways, designed to give the royals a ‘means of escape’ should a fire break out, are ‘severely inadequate’.

The Government ordered an inquiry into fire precautions at all taxpayer-funded Royal Palaces following the devastating 1992 fire at Windsor Castle.

The Royal Household is now planning upgrades to St James’s Palace to ‘improve the safety of occupants’.

A spokesman for St James’s Palace said: ‘Fire risk assessments and inspections are undertaken on a regular basis.’

Beatrice’s rented apartment in St James’s Palace, which she originally shared with sister Eugenie, was refurbished in 2008 with £250,000 of taxpayers’ money.

But the Duke of York wrote to the Queen last autumn, asking that his daughters should be granted accommodation at Kensington Palace, alongside the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry.

Last year, Eugenie announced plans to move to Ivy Cottage in the grounds of Kensington Palace, only for the move to be delayed due to damp problems.