I usually write here about visits to heritage sites, but my eye was caught by the quoted costs for refurbishing the Palace of Westminster (Houses of Parliament). The buildings are subsiding and apart from that need general refurbishing of the fabric and an updating of the plant and services. The costs were first quoted as being in excess of \u00a31 billion. Now the estimates span from \u00a32 billion to an eye-watering \u00a37 billion – the latter estimate including delays caused by not moving the MPs out, and likely cost inflation.
\nBeing a member of the National Trust and also English heritage I am normally in favour of preserving old buildings, but spending this much on one project seems a restoration too far.
\n\u00a37 Bn will be telephone numbers to most people so what could you buy for that?
\n500 big ticket restoration projects like Windsor \u00a328m, Ightham Mote \u00a311m, Catle Drogo \u00a311m, Uppark \u00a318m
\nOr \u00a318 million for each one of the 380 properties in this blog.
\nor: Two large aircraft carriers.
\nor: A quarter of the HS2 project
\nor: resolve immediate Greek debt crisis
\nor: pay off NHS trust debts and re-fund
\nor: cancel most of proposed \u00a312 billion welfare cuts
\nMad, isn’t it?<\/p>\n
So what’s there that is really worth preserving?
\nThe medieval Westminster Hall is an amazing and ancient structure that should be preserved. And would be a shame to lose the iconic Gothic exterior of the Houses of Pariament. But the rest of it? Do we really want to spend billions preserving the Victorian interiors? I think not. The House of Commons, demolished by German bombing, dates from the 1940s\/50s.<\/p>\n
One can’t help reflecting that English Heritage was recently given a private charitable status so that maintenance of ancient monuments, formerly the responsibility of the Government via the Ministry of Works and irs successors, is no longer charged to the public purse. Maybe the same rules should apply to the Palace of Westminster?
\nAt the very least, efforts by MPs to stay in place during the refit, thus increasing the duration of the project and greatly increasing costs, should be resisted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I usually write here about visits to heritage sites, but my eye was caught by the quoted costs for refurbishing the Palace of Westminster (Houses of Parliament). The buildings are subsiding and apart from that need general refurbishing of the fabric and an updating of the plant and services. The costs were first quoted as … Continue reading “Westminster – a restoration too far?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.daysoutblog.me.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2316"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.daysoutblog.me.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.daysoutblog.me.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.daysoutblog.me.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.daysoutblog.me.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2316"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.daysoutblog.me.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2316\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2324,"href":"http:\/\/www.daysoutblog.me.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2316\/revisions\/2324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.daysoutblog.me.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.daysoutblog.me.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.daysoutblog.me.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}