Restoration and Renewal: Developing the strategic case and costed proposals

A major refurbishment programme is needed to protect and preserve the heritage of the Palace of Westminster and ensure it can continue as the home of UK Parliament. The Restoration and Renewal Programme was established by Parliament to undertake this work. In 2019 legislation established the Parliamentary Works Sponsor Body to oversee the Programme.

In 2022 a new approach to the works was proposed by the Commissions of the two Houses of Parliament and endorsed by both Houses. The Sponsor Body was abolished and its remit transferred to a joint department of Parliament overseen by the Restoration and Renewal Client Board.

In 2024, the Client Board published a strategic case (PDF) and recommended that further detailed work on the costing of three approaches to deliver restoration and renewal should be undertaken.

The costed proposals (February 2026)

The Client Board’s report Delivering restoration and renewal of the Palace of Westminster: the costed proposals (PDF) was published on 5 February 2026. It set out the costs and timescale of four approaches to undertaking the restoration and renewal of the Palace of Westminster.

The Client Board recommended that both Houses of Parliament should be asked to approve a package of “phase one” preparatory works and to reduce the number of approaches being considered to undertake the works for the restoration of the Palace of Westminster (the “phase two” works) to two.

The Client Board said the preparatory work was expected to take seven years and cost £3 billion.

While the preparatory works are undertaken, the Client Board recommended further development of two approaches for the phase two works:

• a full decant of the Palace – both Houses move out of the Palace of Westminster to allow the works to be undertaken
• an enhanced maintenance and improvement approach (EMI+), which would allow the House of Commons to remain in the Palace throughout the works. The House of Lords would be decanted and MPs would be decanted to the House of Lords Chamber for two years while work was undertaken on the Commons Chamber.

If the Client Board’s recommendations were agreed to, that “would require a subsequent and final decision on a single preferred option once more detailed design, cost, timescale and risk information is available, no later than mid-2030. Under this approach, the earliest the Houses would begin to be decanted from the Palace is 2032”.

Costs and timescales

The Client Board reported the total programme costs, duration and decant periods for all four of the approaches to the works that it considered. For the two approaches it recommended to continue developing, these are:

Full decant

EMI+

Total cost**

£8.4-11.5 bn

£11.8-18.7 bn

Total duration

19-24 years

38-61 years

HC decant period

8-10 years

up to two years*

HL decant period

12-15 years

8-13 years

* to the House of Lords Chamber
** Total programme costs (including optimism bias and risk but excluding inflation and opportunities).

The Client Board also said that “Not making a decision on the R&R Programme has its own costs”. It said the estimated cost of delaying the start of the delivery phase of the R&R Programme is around £70m per year at current prices”. In addition, there would be “£250m to £350m in the inflationary impact on construction costs across the whole of the Programme for each year a decision is not made to select the Programme’s delivery option”.

A new approach to the restoration and renewal of the Palace of Westminster

Initial estimates of the cost and duration of the Restoration and Renewal Programme were presented to the Commissions of the two Houses of Parliament in January 2022, by the programme’s Sponsor Body. It was estimated to cost £7 billion to £13 billion, taking 19 to 28 years, with a decant lasting 12 to 20 years.

The Sponsor Body was established by statute to set the strategic direction of the project, provide leadership and governance, liaise with parliamentarians and other stakeholders, monitor performance and prepare the business case for the work.

The Commissions were concerned about both the costs and duration of the programme. During 2022 they proposed, and the two Houses endorsed, a new approach to undertaking the work.

The Sponsor Body was abolished and its functions were transferred to the Corporate Officers (the Clerks) of the two Houses. Staff of the Sponsor Body were transferred to a new joint department of the two Houses (the Restoration and Renewal Client Team), to support the Corporate Officers in their new functions.

Both Houses also endorsed a proposal from the two Commissions that they, meeting as a Client Board, would be “responsible for making critical strategic choices and recommendations relating to the restoration and renewal of the Palace of Westminster”.

The Client Board was to be advised by a separate Programme Board, comprising members of both Houses, officials and independent members with relevant expertise in major programmes.

The two Commissions’ proposals were set out in a joint report, Restoration and Renewal of the Palace of Westminster – a new mandate (PDF), from June 2022. Both Houses endorsed the recommendations in July 2022.

The two Houses were subsequently asked to approve a statutory instrument that abolished the Sponsor Body and transferred its functions to the Corporate Officers (that is, the Clerks) of the two Houses of Parliament. The Parliamentary Works Sponsor Body (Abolition) Regulations 2022 came into force on 1 January 2023.

Development and assessment of new options

Following Parliament’s agreement for a new approach to the Restoration and Renewal Programme, the Delivery Authority (the body responsible for undertaking the restoration and renewal work) began “taking forward a wide range of options for the new approach to the works” (PDF).

In their annual progress report on Restoration and Renewal, published in July 2023, the Corporate Officers of the two Houses summarised how the Delivery Authority approached the task of developing new options:

The Delivery Authority has developed a wide range of options for restoration and renewal of the Palace which set out various methods of restoring the Palace as well as a spectrum of levels of ambition for the outcomes that could be achieved. Six outcome levels for the scope of works (the ‘what’) were developed alongside six representative construction scenarios (the ‘how’). Combining each of the outcome levels with each of the construction scenarios has led to the production of thirty-six delivery options.

The shortlisted options

At its meeting on 20 June 2023, the Programme Board agreed that the two Houses should be presented with two construction options (PDF). One would involve a decant of the Palace of Westminster and the other would allow a continued presence. The shortlist it recommended to the Client Board was:

• a full decant and phased return (Construction Scenario C)
• a continuous presence option, “under which the House of Commons Chamber would remain within the Palace, but may temporarily be required to sit in the Lords Chamber (subject to the Lords agreement)” (Construction Scenario F)

Under both construction scenarios, the same outcome would be delivered: “Outcome Level 4”, which had been agreed at the Programme Board’s meeting on 5 June 2023 (PDF).

In his foreword to the Quarterly Report: Restoration and Renewal of the Houses of Parliament, covering July to September 2023 (PDF), Nigel Evans, the Chair of the Programme Board, wrote:

… we unanimously agreed to shortlist one outcome level with delivery through two potential construction scenarios - one “full decant” option where both Houses move out of the Palace at the same time (with one House, assumed to be the Commons, prioritised for return) and one “continued presence” option where the House of Commons Chamber business would remain in the Palace. In doing so we considered speed, safety, and value for money.

In July 2023 the Client Board endorsed the Programme Board’s recommended shortlist of the two delivery options. The Client Board also “requested that a fallback option of enhanced maintenance and improvement forms part of further detailed design work on these options to inform a decision on the preferred way forward in due course”.

At its meeting in November 2023, the Client Board asked parliamentary officials for a more comprehensive description of work on the ‘enhanced maintenance and improvement’ option so that when MPs consider the costed proposals they have more information.

From the strategic case to costed proposals

When the Restoration and Renewal Client Board: Strategic Case (PDF) was published on 19 March 2024, it did not include costed proposals for the alternative delivery approaches recommended by the Programme Board. It concluded that “further detailed work should be undertaken on the shortlisted scope for R&R, and the continued presence and full decant options identified for achieving this”.

The Client Board also considered a further option should be examined to take forward the necessary works. This option, “enhanced maintenance and improvement” (EMI), would be delivered as a rolling, sequenced programme of works.

As work on developing the EMI option has progressed, variants of the option have emerged.

When the strategic case was published in March 2024, the Client Board said “once the three options outlined in this report have been worked up into fully costed proposals”.

In December 2025, Sir Alan Campbell, Leader of the House of Commons, confirmed that a report would be coming out early in the new year (2026). He has also said that “We will bring forward a motion on the report” (PDF), to allow MPs to debate it.

As noted above, the costed proposals were published in February 2026.

Temporary accommodation

On 20 June 2023, the Programme Board “provisionally agreed that the QEII Conference Centre remains the preferred decant location for the House of Lords” (PDF). The conference centre is on Broad Sanctuary, close to the Palace of Westminster.

At its meeting on 24 October 2023, the Programme Board agreed that Richmond House should be recommended to the Client Board as the preferred location for any House of Commons temporary Chamber for the full decant delivery option (PDF).

The Programme Board also agreed that temporary accommodation on the northern part of the Parliamentary Estate (Richmond House and the Norman Shaw buildings) to support a contingency House of Commons Chamber should be considered for the continued presence delivery option.

These proposals were confirmed in the Client Board’s costed proposals. The Client Board also confirmed that a Commons Chamber would be built in Richmond House. If the full decant option was chosen, MPs would meet there. If the EMI+ option was chosen, it would provide resilience and could be used for an unplanned decant of the current Commons Chamber.

Further information on the R&R Programme

Previous Library research briefings provide more detail on the background to the R&R Programme; the passage of the legislation that established the current governance framework; and the developments that have taken place since the act was passed:

• Restoration and Renewal of the Palace of Westminster (December 2018)
• Parliamentary Buildings (Restoration and Renewal) Bill 2017-19 (September 2019)
• Restoration and Renewal - developments since October 2019 (April 2022)
• Restoration and Renewal: A new approach to governance arrangements (January 2024)