The Palace of Westminster:Another Window of Opportunity? LEANNE-MARIE COTTER AND MATTHEW FLINDERS The Palace of Westminster is in need of urgent, substantial repairs. This provides a ‘window of opportunity’ for change. This essay traces the restoration and transformation (or lack of) that the Palace of Westminster has seen in the last half a century, before assessing its current state, and considering whether parliament is ft for purpose. It provides a ‘long-view’ understanding of previous missed ‘windows of opportunity’. The essay focuses on drawing insights from history in order to add a depth of understanding to the contemporary issue. An understanding of the preceding renewal and restoration projects enables us,potentially,to avoid some of the problems that have been previously experienced, and fnally seize this opportunity to build a parliament which is ft for purpose. Keywords: Augustin Pugin; Charles Barry; ft for purpose; Giles Gilbert Scott; Restoration and Renewal programme; window of opportunity; Winston Churchill 1 The Palace of Westminster is in urgent need of substantial repairs.The building is sufer- ing from crumbling stonework, leaking roofs, electrical failures, exposed asbestos, and poor ventilation. There are also concerns about whether the building actually satisfes legal re- quirements in relation to air and water quality for staf and visitors, or Building Regulations for disabled access. The state of the building is so poor that the 2015 Independent Appraisals Report stated that ‘the risk of catastrophic failure is increasing’ and ‘a major failing of the existing service infrastructure is inevitable’. 1 Rectifying this situation is expected to cost anywhere from £3.52 to £5.67 billion (possibly more) and take somewhere between six and 32 years to complete (possibly far longer). In light of the major Restoration and Re- newal programme proposed for the palace,this essay ofers a historically informed analysis of previous periods of parliamentary history in which matters of ‘restoration’ and ‘renewal’ have been addressed.The key questions guiding this essay are:What insights might this ‘long view’ofer the current Restoration and Renewal programme? How have similar challenges been addressed in the past? and What can we learn from the prism of the past? This essay aims to provide a ‘long-view’ understanding of the restoration and renewal of the Palace of Westminster, by drawing on the themes of ‘windows of opportunity’ and ‘lessons from history’. The essay is split into two parts. The frst part provides an overview of 1 Deloitte, Palace of Westminster, Restoration and Renewal Programme, Independent Options Appraisal, Final Report, Volume 1, 8 Sept. 2014, available at http://www.parliament.uk/documents/lords-information-ofce/2015/Independent- Options-Appraisal-fnal-report-A3.pdf (accessed 24 May 2016). C  The Parliamentary History Yearbook Trust 2019