One has the builders in – for next 10 years
May approves £369m for ‘urgent’ Buckingham Palace repairs – including 152 new lavatories
IT IS, for many householders, an all-too familiar tale. What starts with the realisation that a much-loved but ageing property needs rewiring soon leads workmen to discover dodgy plumbing, rusty radiators and rotten skirting boards.
Now, imagine the size of the problem if your home happened to have 775 rooms.
The Queen, who has had to put off essential refitting of Buckingham Palace for several years, can finally go ahead with a 10-year modernisation programme after Theresa May approved £369 million of extra taxpayers’ money to clear a backlog of repairs at the royal residence.
The move has prompted criticism from some quarters at a time when public sector services are facing cuts and pay freezes as a result of the Government’s austerity drive.
But surveyors said that unless urgent work is carried out to replace ageing cabling, plumbing and other features, there was a serious danger of “potentially catastrophic building failure”.
It means the Queen will receive £76.1 million in 2017-18, an increase of £30 million on what she was previously expected to receive. She will be given a similar sum every year for a decade, with all of the extra cash spent on the palace.
The work will include replacing 100 miles of electrical cabling – much of it 60 years old – 30 miles of water pipes, 6,500 electrical sockets, 5,000 light fittings, 2,500 radiators and 500 pieces of sanitary ware, including 152 lavatories.
It will involve lifting 323,000sq ft of floorboards, the equivalent of three and a half football pitches.
The Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh and other members of the Royal family will remain in residence while the work is carried out between 2017 and 2027, but temporary accommodation will be built in the gardens of the palace for some of the 37 live-in staff, as well as offices for 125 employees.
The Queen will, however, have to move to another area of the palace while her apartments are refitted.
Each of the residence’s four wings will be refitted one at a time, starting with the East Wing – the front of the palace – enabling the building to remain fully operational at all times. The work will be almost entirely internal, meaning the exterior of the building will not need to covered in scaffolding or otherwise affected.
During the work, solar panels will be fitted to the roof and new boilers installed to reduce bills in the long term – a projected saving to the public purse of £3.4 million per year.
Tony Johnstone-Burt, Master of the Queen’s Household, said: “Buckingham Palace is one of the most iconic buildings in the world, and this programme is designed to extend its working life by a further 50 years. On completion of the work, we’ll have a palace fit for purpose until 2067.
“The programme addresses parts of the structure you can’t see from the outside: the plumbing, electrics and other essential building services which have gone six decades without a comprehensive upgrade.
“We take the responsibility that comes with receiving these public funds extremely seriously indeed. Equally, we are convinced that by making this investment in Buckingham Palace now, we can avert a much more costly and potentially catastrophic building failure in the years to come.”
David Gauke, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, called the work “urgent”. The extra cash was agreed following discussions between Mrs May, Philip Hammond, the Chancellor, and Sir Alan Reid, Keeper of the Privy Purse.
The grant is expected to be rubberstamped by Parliament over the next six months. Graham Smith, of the anti- monarchy group Republic, called the funding an “absolute disgrace” and suggested the cost should have been met by opening the palace to paying tourists all year round, rather than just in the summer.
‘The plumbing, electrics and other essential services have gone six decades without a comprehensive upgrade’