The House of Commons has written off £70 million of wasted work on a temporary chamber to rehouse MPs amid uncertainty about the future of plans to refurbish parliament.
Peers, MPs and their staff have complained about sewage leaks, freezing temperatures and a damaged dispatch box over past months as hundreds of repair jobs have gone up to half a year without being resolved.
In its annual report published last month, the Commons revealed that it had to write off £70.2 million of work on constructing a temporary chamber as a “constructive loss” amid “increased uncertainty” about restoration plans.
MPs had been due to vacate the Houses of Parliament to allow work to take place. Jacob Rees-Mogg, leader of the House of Commons, all but killed off that plan in spring when he dismissed the idea as “fanciful” and insisted that the pandemic had shown that MPs could work remotely.
In 2018 MPs backed a “full decant” proposal, at an estimated cost of £4 billion, which would entail them moving out of the Palace of Westminster and into Richmond House on Whitehall for about six years. A review of the plan was started last year to examine whether it was still the best option.
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Its final report, published in March, concluded that the “full decant” should go ahead and that any other option would result in “decades of large-scale disruption and the significant risks that would come with working on a large, noisy and complex construction site”.
Work had already begun on converting Richmond House into a temporary home with a replica chamber, office space, select committee rooms and a press area all in the works.
The Commons annual report said that there was “increased uncertainty over the scope and timing of the longer-term plans” for the project.
“We could no longer be sure that the work undertaken so far has an economic value, so for accounting purposes we have written it off,” it said. “A constructive loss of £70.2 million has therefore been recognised in the account.”
Rees-Mogg said a vote would be put to MPs in early 2023 on alternative proposals for the palace refurbishment, scheduled to begin in the middle of the decade. It comes as freedom of information disclosures by the Commons identified hundreds of repair jobs that had gone up to six months unfixed. These included a complaint about sewage coming up near Chancellor’s Court.
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MPs and their staff also complained about the parliamentary heating systems not being up to scratch.
“Please can someone fix the heating in all the committee rooms as they are all freezing,” a staff member asked. Another complained about an area that had no heating and was a “really unpleasant environment for members”.
Other repairs overdue included a request to “modify two cheese trolleys from Members Dining Room” and a complaint that the wheel of a House of Lords ice cream machine had fallen off.
As of April 7, there were 295 “reactive” jobs overdue, with the oldest remaining unaddressed for six months.
These included 11 overdue faults with annunciators and division bells, 34 fire safety repairs overdue, and five lift faults that had not yet been fixed. A report by the National Audit Office said last year that it cost £2 million a week just to keep the buildings running.
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A Commons spokeswoman said: “The house service has been and continues to maintain and preserve the Palace of Westminster and our other grade I and II listed buildings on an ongoing basis. This ongoing work means we will hand over a continuing programme of works to R&R when it starts. To ensure we provide a safe working environment for all those working in parliament, this work has included other critical projects including fire safety upgrades.
“The commission agreed in September 2020 that Richmond House would be used as accommodation for members, and to create better welfare facilities for house staff, in order to ensure the decant of Norman Shaw North could proceed as planned. Work to reconfigure parts of Richmond House has started, with moves expected during summer recess 2021. Beyond this, further works on Richmond House are currently paused until there is more certainty regarding the R&R delivery strategy.”
