Palace of Westminster: Repairs and Maintenance

The Restoration and Renewal (R&R) Programme for the Palace of Westminster aims to rebuild the UK’s heritage construction skills base, create thousands of high‑quality jobs, and strengthen capability across the whole heritage sector.

Under the Parliamentary Buildings (Restoration and Renewal) Act 2019, which sets the framework for the R&R Programme, those responsible for the Programme are required to have regard to “the need to ensure that opportunities to secure economic or other benefits of the Parliamentary building works are available in all areas of the UK”.

Work has already begun to generate interest in the R&R Programme with businesses across the UK, including through engagement across all nations and regions. Over 100 organisations and businesses have attended 13 R&R supplier engagement roundtables held across every UK nation and region of England. In addition, the R&R Delivery Authority is working with partners across the UK—industry bodies, training providers and heritage agencies—to create a long-term, sustainable skills pipeline that supports both this programme and the wider UK economy. This includes investing in training people to deliver the highly skilled construction and heritage roles that will be needed on the Programme.

The R&R Programme seeks to strike the right balance between ensuring fair and open competitive procurement processes that provide opportunities for business across all four nations and regions of the UK, with the need to ensure value for money for the taxpayer. To date (until the end of 2025–26), more than 50% of the value of the contracts for the R&R Programme have been awarded to UK companies outside of London and the South East. This figure is calculated from the head office or billing address of the suppliers and so does not necessarily mean that this is where the work is actually being undertaken as the Programme is engaged with many suppliers who have multiple work sites.