Estate safety (2024)
File ref: F24-148
Date of Response: 02/04/2024
Request
How much money has been spent on temporary work to keep the Palace of Westminster estate safe? This should be for the three years to the date of your reply, and should be provided quarterly for that period. It should include the following:
- What the money was spent on (ie, propping up roofs, stopping leaks)
- When it was spent
Response
In the first instance, please note that the Houses of Parliament consists of the House of Commons and House of Lords, which are two separate public authorities in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA). If you wish to request information held by the House of Lords, you may wish to consider forwarding your request to them also; requests for information relating to the House of Lords should be directed to FOILORDS@parliament.uk. In this instance however, please note that the information requested in this instance is held bicamerally between the two Houses. Therefore, this response covers both Houses of Parliament.
Additionally, we have interpreted “Palace of Westminster estate” in this instance to mean any maintenance works specifically relating directly to the Palace of Westminster.
How much money has been spent on temporary work to keep the Palace of Westminster…safe? This should be for the three years to the date of your reply, and should be provided quarterly for that period. It should include the following:
1) What the money was spent on (ie, propping up roofs, stopping leaks)
and
2) When it was spent
Please note that the FOIA only provides a requester with a right to access recorded information at the time a request is made. We have therefore interpreted “three years to the date of your reply” in this instance to mean the period 28 February 2021 to 29 February 2024. Additionally, based on your wording, we have interpreted “temporary work to keep the Palace of Westminster safe” to mean specifically those undertaken in a maintenance capacity.
This information is held by the House of Commons. The total amount spent on temporary maintenance works to keep the Palace of Westminster safe during this period was £1,369,002 (inc VAT).
Please note that, due to the length of some these works, these are the current costs we hold at the time of your request and they may be subject to change in future.
A breakdown of these costs along with specific details of works undertaken (pdf, 86KB). [CSV (csv, 1KB)]