It has been revealed that The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh will move out of Buckingham Palace in 2025 when Her Majesty will be 99-years-old, and Prince Philip will be 104.
The monarch and her husband will leave their private apartment in the building to enable vital renovation work to take place.
Buckingham Palace is currently undergoing a ten-year renovation project which will cost £369 million.
The work began in April 2017 and is expected to come to an end in 2027.
The work is being carried out because of ageing cables, lead pipes, wiring and boilers that are of a substantial fire risk owing to their age. The government, nor indeed anybody, wants a repeat of the 1992 fire that gutted Windsor Castle.
At the time the project was announced in 2016, The Master of the Queen’s Household, Tony Johnstone-Burt, said that the refurbishment work has taken into account the best value for money.
He said: “We take the responsibility that comes with receiving these public funds extremely seriously indeed; equally, we are convinced that by making this investment in Buckingham Palace now we can avert a much more costly and potentially catastrophic building failure in the years to come.”
Despite the hefty costs, it is thought once the refurbishments are completed, much more money will be generated into the British economy. This would be through longer summer opening hours, more private tours and savings from maintenance work the palace currently has to spend.
The cost will be spread over ten years and in comparison is only 0.0003% of the NHS budget. The refurbishment of the House of Commons will cost a lot more – a whopping £4bn.
The Treasury has received £2.4 billion in profit on assets owned by the Crown since 2007 – six times the £369 million cost of refurbishments.
