RESTORATIONS of the Palace of Westminster are expected to last up to 20 years and cost an eye-watering £14 billion, three times the original estimate.
Under plans that will be announced in the new year, MPs and Lords will have to move out of the 19th-century building that is in critical need of repairs.
The last time MPs left Westminster was during the Blitz in 1941.
MPs were originally told that the work would take just six years and cost around £4bn with a later estimate suggesting the cost would rise to £7bn.
The Restoration & Renewal Sponsor Body was set up in 2019 and has a board including MPs, peers, historians and infrastructure experts. It is understood to have completed the first detailed survey of the work and found that with MPs in the building, the work would take more than 30 years.
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MPs and peers are to be presented with several other options to avoid the building being under renovation for three decades.
In 2018 MPs backed a proposal for them to move into Richmond House in Whitehall for around six years but in early 2023 MPs are expected to vote on alternative proposals with refurbishment work due to begin in 2027.
The 20-year option is understood to be the worst-case scenario according to the body as there is understood to be a plan to keep the time that elected representatives would be away from the building to between 12 and 15 years.
Due to fire risks, leaking roofs and other hazards including asbestos, a parliamentary report 10 years ago said that if the Palace of Westminster were not a listed building of the "highest heritage value", its owners would have been advised to demolish it.
The cost of managing the building is rising and recent projects cost £127 million in one year alone. Weekly costs more than doubled between 2015 and 2019 to about £2.5m.
The vast majority (about 90%) of the cost will be spent saving the building and replacing the outdated and obsolete services, such as the electrics, gas, water, heating and sewerage, which dates from the 1880s.
Improvements are also required to make the building and its 1000 or so rooms on four floors more wheelchair accessible.
A spokesman for the Houses of Parliament Restoration and Renewal Programme said: “We are developing a detailed restoration plan, based on tens of thousands of hours of building investigations, that will give the most accurate costs and timescales for the complex and essential work needed to save the Palace of Westminster. Any early information is based on preliminary analysis, which will be built on as we continue our vital planning work during 2022.”
The UK Government said: “The Palace of Westminster must be safeguarded for future generations as the home of the UK’s democracy, but when parliament takes its final decision on how to proceed it must be clear — as the government has been throughout — that it will provide value for money for the taxpayer.”
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