Palace refurb

The Palace is public property and is Grade 1 listed. It has had little or no maintenance since the 50s - in other words for most of HM's reign. I would like to know why not? Surely it's up to the owners to keep it in decent condition. This amounts to landlord negligence. I have been looking at some info about the Crown Estate which owns a vast amount of land and property all over the country. It isn't clear whether this applies to the Palace but what is clear is that it brings in more than enough revenue (paid to the Treasury) to pay for the renovations.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_Estate

Excellent point GillT57.

Just let the b****y place fall down. That's what austerity is all about and after all we're 'all in this together'.

Judging by the Japanise tourists I saw on Friday traipsing around The New Place in Stratford-upon-Avon it won't matter if it's not even there any more.

for those who didn't know Shakeskeare's House 'The New Place' was pulled down in 1703 but you still get charged to see where it once stood

Can she not go halves? If not, open it up to the public and make it pay for itself.

I am with all those who have said repairs should have been ongoing as and when needed, then the plumbing, wiring, etc would not have all gone wrong at the same time. Common sense really, if something needs fixing, then fix it because before you know it, something else will go wrong. Whoever is in charge of maintenance seems to have been turning a blind eye or hoping for the best. Housing repairs need to be kept on top of. As previous poster said "a stitch in time saves nine"

If these repairs and updates are to be done, I think that a condition of being awarded contracts should be that a certain percentage of the work is done by apprentices; thus as a country we would at least gain from the young people concerned learning trades such as carpentry,electrical installations, plastering etc. And not to be used as cheap labour either, proper supervised apprenticeships which will be asset on their cvs later on. I am going to write to my (flag waving/take back control Brexit supporter)of an MP and ask that he raises this as a condition of contracts being awarded

I am no Tory but in fairness to May the labour shadow chancellor agrees with her on this

Personally I feel the Queen does do a very good job but I cannot believe that in these desperate times when many of her subjects are homeless, sometimes through no real fault of their own but because of horrendous circumstances, she can accept that public money is used to pay for these improvements when she is such a very rich woman in her own right.
After all that Theresa May said in the beginning I'm amazed that she is sanctioning this.

It's good that the Government are looking after the housing needs of at least two of the nation's OAPs!

Mostlyharmless I agree with your views totally. The Queen works harder than any other older person I know, time to reorganise things when the heir takes over. No the Queen is by no means the richest woman now, what about the philanthropic Mrs Philip Green! !

I don't think the Queen's the richest woman in the world any more, either.

mags1234 the Queen doesn't own Buckingham Palace so not sure why she should use her own money to do essential repairs.

I had a conversation with my H over this situation, why has it been left so long, couldn't they have just done parts of it over the years the queen has been residing there. Like all of us with our property we refurb over the years. Would seem more sensible to me.

I want to update my own house, not pay for a Royal residence to be upgraded. The queen works very hard indeed, do do a few of their family, tho many many hangers on, but she is worth millions! No, I am happy for my taxes to go into education and national health services, and for ex servicemen, but I am mad! I am a tax paying OAP and this is infuriating me. My personal opinion.

Mind, they do have their online Buckingham Palace shop to raise a bit of extra money, with the sale of fluffy corgis among other things!!

Visitors do include Buck Palace as a must see landmark when visiting London. I am one of those visitors and have twice paid my money to see inside the Palace in the same way that I have visited other major attractions. It is only opened for a few weeks of the year, though, and I think that only came about to pay for the repairs needed for Windsor( which I have also visited). I am all for repairing faulty electrics and installing solar panels. That seems sensible to me. The monarch does not need to live there so why not open the Palace all year round to paying visitors and raise the money that way. No one is compelled to visit.
The grounds are fabulously huge. Sell off an acre and that would fund the whole refurbishment.
In terms of grandeur, I would say that the palaces of St Petersburg and the Kremlin take some beating.

May is just say that the National trust is a charity. It gets no money from government: the money it receives is from membership and visitors' entrance money. Some properties were given to the Trust with an endowment but not all. The Trust wouldn't touch Buck House with a bargepole. I wish our Royal family was run like the Dutch one!

Public building it may be, used by the public it is not. Buckingham Palace is provided by the state in order that the royal family have somewhere to live in London, and a palace from which they can entertain visiting heads of state. The rest of the building is a workplace dedicated to management of the royal family's affairs. In short, this is the headquarters of the monarch. Our monarch is the richest woman in the world, there is no reason why she should not pay to put her own house in order, and to pay herself to make the workplace of her staff safe and comfortable, just as other employers have to do.

Preservation doesn't mean leaving things as they have always been. In fact if we really want to look at preserving Buck House it should be given a business plan that will take it through the 21st century and I very much doubt if the present arrangement will. Many other big houses have been saved by making them into tourist attractions why not this one?

We have St.James Palace, Kensington Palace and Windsor Castle , that's enough heritage to pay for

The shadow chancellor supports us paying for it

I'm with you mostly harmless - do it or loose it - I don't want any of our heritage changed or lost so we must do it. One could argue we should be doing these things before they get into this state, it's only using the money we should have been spending year on year in one lump - although due to us not spending regularly it'll cost more now. I guess the fundamental argument is do we as a nation wish to preserve our heritage- with the costs that incurs or just turn it into a series of horrible flats and hotels or modernise everything with a bulldozer. Personally I'm for preservation - I know that means less money available for me, mine and my locality - but that's the cost of preserving our way of life the way I like it .... I'm game - up my tax a bit.

BP is a public building - it used as a place of business - and affairs of state. It is not a private residence and never has been. If anyone would like to suggest a replacement to be used for state occasions, investitures, meeting and greeting foreign heads of state, go for it. The money should have been spent years ago, ditto for the Houses of Parliament.

Petition about this
you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/make-royals-pay-for-palace-renovation

Hope all those who have posted about asking Queenie to pay sign it.

The monarch can move to Windsor full time