MPs and peers have been presented with options to restore the Palace of Westminster at a cost of up to almost £40 billion.
The restoration and renewal client board has put forward two options for the preservation of Parliament.
One involved a “full decant” which would see both houses move out of the Palace of Westminster while works take place and another where the palace would be worked on in stages.
The full decant would last 19 to 24 years and cost up to £15.6 billion, while the other option would take 38 to 61 years and cost up to £39.2 billion.
Those figures include inflation.
MPs and peers have also been asked to agree to initial restoration works at the Houses of Parliament lasting seven years, at a cost of up to £3 billion. That work could start in 2026 if approved.
Jesse Norman MP, Shadow Leader of the House of Commons, said:“The Costed Proposals Report is asking parliamentarians to approve eye-watering expenditures of up to £19 billion pounds on a project with unclear governance, limited scrutiny and low confidence of effective project or cost management.”
The board will ask MPs to choose between the final two options by mid-2030.
The phase one works will include refurbishing the inside of the Victoria Tower, building a jetty on the Thames for deliveries by river and starting underground construction on tunnel shafts.
A full decant would see Commons business start to move to the so-called Northern Estate – outside of the palace but close by – and the Lords to the nearby QEII conference centre from 2032.
The proposals say the cost of repairing and maintaining the Palace of Westminster is “unsustainable” at the current £1.5 million weekly cost.
It is facing a failure of heating to a large part of the House of Lords, significant problems with the sewerage system and an ongoing loss of toilets in areas with reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete.
Since 2016 there have been 36 fire incidents, 12 asbestos incidents and 19 stonemasonry incidents.
The debate over how to revamp the Houses of Parliament has been ongoing for years due to the expected cost of the project and concerns about the condition of the historic buildings on the World Heritage Site.
MPs and peers had agreed a plan in 2018 for both the Commons and Lords to move to temporary facilities near the existing site to allow essential repairs and upgrades to be made.
But this was subsequently revisited amid concerns about the cost.