LONDON — British lawmakers have been warned that restoring the country’s crumbling parliament will be “infinitely” more difficult than repairing France’s fire-wracked Notre Dame cathedral.
MPs are expected to vote at the end of the year on plans to refurbish the Palace of Westminster, much of which dates back to the 19th century. Proposals to fix the estate — which is beset by fire hazards and maintenance problems — have long stalled over lack of political agreement.
Plans to move MPs out of the famous building while major works are carried out were first approved in the wake of Paris’s 2019 Notre Dame fire, which many in Westminster saw as a call to action.
With that cathedral now restored and reopened, U.K. parliamentarians are again sounding the alarm that the Palace could face a similar fate if crucial repairs continue to be delayed.
Peter Hain, a Labour peer, recently obtained figures showing that fires had broken out 45 times on the premises over the last decade.
He told the Press Association he was “horrified” at the prospect of a “Notre Dame inferno incubating” on the crumbling estate.
However, MPs and peers who oversee the restoration project received a private briefing in December advising them that the two projects should not be compared, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.
“We were told that it’s apples and oranges, because parliament is an infinitely more complicated building and a workplace for thousands of people, which Notre Dame isn’t,” said one person who received the briefing, granted anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
A parliamentary official echoed this, describing parliament as “orders of magnitude more complicated” than Notre Dame.
Richard Gilbey, a crossbench peer known as peer Lord Vaux, sits on the restoration and renewal program board. He said in a debate last week that there was no quick fix for the repair job facing parliament.
All of the three options for refurbishment “will take many years,” he warned, adding that “none of us in this room is likely, even on the shortest decant process, to come back into this building in our time.”
MPs will be asked to decide between three options: full decant, in which MPs relocate to another site during the refurbishment; partial decant, where sections of the building are decanted in turn; and rolling repairs.
Yet that decision is itself now subject to a delay — originally slated for early 2025, it is now expected at the end of the year.
A spokesperson for the U.K. parliament said: “Work is already happening across the parliamentary estate to ensure the safety of those working here and visiting.
“We remain on track to bring costed proposals for the restoration of the Palace of Westminster to both Houses by the end of the year detailing costs, timescales, risks and benefits of three delivery options, all of which represent a significant, multibillion-pound investment in the palace.”
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