Crumbling Westminster = £3bn +. What should we do ? Poll..

[Harry H]

[Chris Type R]

Harry H said:

As if the gender ratio would get past scrutiny.

[Short Grain]

ecs said:

Move them out of London into a new building - surely that would cost a lot less than £3bn?

Restore Westminster using part public funds and part Lottery/charity/something else and open it for tourists and the public to visit.

Could add an Accommodation Block to the new building for all MPs to use whilst in London and save on second home costs, spurious hotel expense claims, etc. Part of the savings could go to the restoration of Westminster, the rest back to the Country.
(haven't read the whole thread so may have missed if anyone else put this, sorry in advance)

[Daniel1]

Short Grain said:

Could add an Accommodation Block to the new building for all MPs to use whilst in London and save on second home costs, spurious hotel expense claims, etc. Part of the savings could go to the restoration of Westminster, the rest back to the Country.
(haven't read the whole thread so may have missed if anyone else put this, sorry in advance)

i remember during the expenses scandal on second homes they refused to accommodate the MP's in a apartment complex because of the risk of them all getting taken out at once by terrorists.

Im not sure i buy that argument. The cabinet and shadow cabinet maybe, along with key civil servants, but not sure about the rest.

[AJS-]

Otispunkmeyer said:

iphonedyou said:

AJS- said:

My clever joke answer:

Stop employing ridiculously expensive consultants and experts to do everything like this. Looking here the most expensive building in the world is the impressive Marina Sands complex in Singapore, with 3 linked towers and over 2500 rooms, which cost $4.7 billion, or about £3bn including buying the land. How on earth can they arrive at such a ridiculous number to restore a stone building?

Speaking as a QS on a large heritage project - you can't begin to imagine. Restoration can be much more expensive than building new.

Didn't the tiler they interviewed on Newsnight mention the little floor tiles he was replacing cost about £75 each? Crazy money, but then they aren't just some tiles are they. Its bespoke. Repairing stonework also costs a fortune, its a skilled job, there are probably few who can do it and its tortuously slow going.

Stonemasons aren't THAT scarce. Supposing they were to knock it all down, quarry brand new stone and build an exact replica, how much would you guess? I'm guessing nowhere near that figure.

The thing about £75 tiles just illustrates my point. I couldn't pick a Westminster tile from any other but they'd seriously consider spending £15000 to tile a small room like the one I am in now, which I can't imagine cost more than £100 to tile. Multiply that by the size of Westminster and you can start to see where the money goes, but also how it can be saved.

It doesn't need to be bespoke. Tiles are tiles and I don't see why those in parliament get any particular harder use than any others. And if you're looking at saving future generations the cost of replacing the inferior goods the rest of ua make do with on our bathroom floors after a few decades then I imagine they would thank us more for taking it off the national debt than the floor of Westminster. Especially since whatever tiles they use will probably be deemed racist and ripped up in 5 years time anyway.

For the actual building itself, preserve or replace like for like, for the fittings and trimmings use decent quality stuff at sensible prices.

[Digga]

However you dice it, £3bn is a lot for a monkeyhouse.

[Yazar]

Daniel1 said:

Short Grain said:

Could add an Accommodation Block to the new building for all MPs to use whilst in London and save on second home costs, spurious hotel expense claims, etc. Part of the savings could go to the restoration of Westminster, the rest back to the Country.
(haven't read the whole thread so may have missed if anyone else put this, sorry in advance)

i remember during the expenses scandal on second homes they refused to accommodate the MP's in a apartment complex because of the risk of them all getting taken out at once by terrorists.

Im not sure i buy that argument. The cabinet and shadow cabinet maybe, along with key civil servants, but not sure about the rest.

The Dolphin Square Estate in London is home to around 70 Mp's and 10 Lords. Not been hit by terrorists yet.

[anonymous-user]

Chimune said:

I see this as a unique opportunity to modernise the way UK politics operates. I think its obvious that what UK politics needs is a total overhaul and what better way to do it than getting Sir Norman Forster etc to build a new modern Parliament designed to cope with the way we work and make decisions in the 21st century.

A few years ago it became obvious that court business was too great for it to continue to be accommodated in the Royal Courts of Justice on the Strand. So a new building was put up on Fetter Lane, and a chunk of high profile, high value, important commercial work was moved there.

The RCJ is an impressive building. When you enter it, you feel like you've stepped into somewhere important, to do something important. The older Victorian courtrooms are impressive places (although the acoustics are not ideal) in which have proper gravitas. When in them, you feel like you are in the middle of justice being done.

The building on Fetter Lane is like a modern office block. It is shared with a Pret a Manger and a firm of solicitors. It has all the grandeur and gravitas of a modern office block. The first thing you see on entering is the admin desks where cases get issues and papers get filed - it looks exactly like the ticket office at Waterloo. The treads on the stairs to the first floor had to be replaced in the first year because of wear. The building was supposed to be one for the administration of justice in the 21st century. Unfortunately it seems to have been designed by people who had a loose idea of how courts worked, and who didn't ask too many questions. Memorably, in some courts the witness box is situated such that the Judge couldn't see the witness whilst he or she was giving evidence. The big courts are too big, and the small courts are too small. Goldilocks would look in vain for a court that is "just right".

Fortunately, the quality of decision making remains as high as it always has been; it is fair to say that no one really expected a new building would make commercial judges even cleverer than they are though.

The lesson from this is that modernisation for the sake of it can be a bad idea, poorly executed.

[mrpurple]

Something like this would do.....string up a few hammocks and 2 birds with one stone.

[AJS-]

Looks like a Bangkok Pistonheads meet!

[MentalSarcasm]

Having read the Guardian article I can understand why it'll cost that much. From the sounds of it this has been an on-going problem for a while now, and the reason why it'll be so expensive is because successive governments have decided to just ignore the problem and let the next lot deal with it. If it had been dealt with twenty years ago then no doubt it would have been a lot cheaper. The biggest problem with large historic buildings is that they're often left to the point of collapse before anyone starts to worry about them, and then the bill is huge, whereas if they're looked after properly then you'll save money in the long run but probably not realise it because it'll still be expensive.

While I'm certainly not an architect, I've seen some of the old plans for the building. They're absolutely beautiful, but the level of detail is incredible, certainly some of the cost will be because chunks of the work will need to be done entirely by hand, I genuinely don't think that even modern power tools would be able to manage parts of it, and master craftsmen aren't cheap especially because they're so rare nowadays.

Part of the extra 1 billion is no doubt coming from the fact that they're leaving it so long to debate it! Why is 7 million pounds being spent on ANOTHER report!? By 2016 there will be even more work to do, especially if more bad winters make the damp problem worse. I genuinely don't see why they can't debate the worst of the problems now, and agree a budget for them, and THEN come back to it on 2016 and debate the next stage.

[McWigglebum4th]

MentalSarcasm said:

Having read the Guardian article I can understand why it'll cost that much. From the sounds of it this has been an on-going problem for a while now, and the reason why it'll be so expensive is because successive governments have decided to just ignore the problem and let the next lot deal with it. If it had been dealt with twenty years ago then no doubt it would have been a lot cheaper. The biggest problem with large historic buildings is that they're often left to the point of collapse before anyone starts to worry about them, and then the bill is huge, whereas if they're looked after properly then you'll save money in the long run but probably not realise it because it'll still be expensive.

While I'm certainly not an architect, I've seen some of the old plans for the building. They're absolutely beautiful, but the level of detail is incredible, certainly some of the cost will be because chunks of the work will need to be done entirely by hand, I genuinely don't think that even modern power tools would be able to manage parts of it, and master craftsmen aren't cheap especially because they're so rare nowadays.

Part of the extra 1 billion is no doubt coming from the fact that they're leaving it so long to debate it! Why is 7 million pounds being spent on ANOTHER report!? By 2016 there will be even more work to do, especially if more bad winters make the damp problem worse. I genuinely don't see why they can't debate the worst of the problems now, and agree a budget for them, and THEN come back to it on 2016 and debate the next stage.

As it is political suicide to spend 7billion on the houses of parliament


The only politically acceptable answer is to move the whole lot to a new cheaper building and let the palace of westminster collapse


of course at the very last minute the public will demand the building is saved.


So it will be 2.9 billion for the new building plus a hidden 10 billion in a PFI plus 5 billion to restore the original building as well as at least 500 million in a few enquiries

[mrpurple]

Could always get the French / Chinese involved I'm sure they would help get a new one built.

[Morningside]

Pack them all off to Fairfield Halls Croydon for a couple of months.

[anonymous-user]

Chris Type R said:

this, although my idea was to base it temporarily in an industrial park in Milton Keynes somewhere.

Tyre Tread said:

Nah, Birmingahm or Leicester sould be much better innit?

This is exactly the reason the NEC was built for, Rail and Air links too, Get them shipped in

[loafer123]

I have a friend who works there and has some role in the project.

£3bn is not a high estimate and he says that the additional cost of keeping them in there whilst the works are done would be horrendous.

I think this is an ideal opportunity for MPs to reconnect with the country and think parliament should be convened around the UK during the works.

If a coupe of new conference centres need to be built along the way which give a lasting legacy and capacity to hold parliament regionally in the future, all the better.

[greygoose]

loafer123 said:

I think this is an ideal opportunity for MPs to reconnect with the country and think parliament should be convened around the UK during the works.

If a coupe of new conference centres need to be built along the way which give a lasting legacy and capacity to hold parliament regionally in the future, all the better.

The cost of moving MEPs from Brussels to Strasbourg is an example of how this will be too expensive, one parliament is all that is needed.

[Police State]

Bung them in Blair's £1bn legacy for a few years.

[0a]

It's quite frustrating that they cannot see the opportunity in this. Close parliament for refurbishment for a few years and invest in a "movable parliament" set up that visits different areas around the UK in suitable exhibition space. This will get the work required done, and bring attention on the different cities that parliament locates in (say for a few months at a time).

[BlackLabel]

We could buy back HMP Wear and stick all the parliamentarians on that until Westminster is fixed.