Majority of Brits against funding extensive £369m Buckingham Palace renovations

The majority of Brits are opposed to tax payers money being used to fund the extensive 10-year £369m Buckingham Palace renovations, according to a new poll.

A YouGov poll commissioned for by The Times found that most of the UK believes that the refurbishment of Buckingham Palace should not come out of the public purse.

Of the 2500 people questioned, 56% said that the government should not contribute to the renovations, while 29% said that it was right for taxpayers to pay for the royal makeover.

Evidence from the poll highlights Brits would be more in favour of the renovations if the royals could find a way to meet the costs without relying on taxpayer’s money.

Labour MP Norman Baker, author of And What Do You Do: What The Royal Family Don’t Want You To Know, has been a firm critique of the “opulent” renovations.

She said: “First of all, the renovations should be smaller in scale — it is far too opulent.

“And secondly, it should be funded through visitor ticket sales in the same way that the repair of Windsor Castle was funded after the fire in 1992. It should not come from the public taxpayer.”

Since 2017, restoration has taken place throughout the palace to replace ageing cabling and plumbing systems that were last updated in the 1950s.

The refurbishment works will see all state visits relocated to Windsor Castle until 2027 while the state rooms are updated.

The royal revamp also means that King Charles has had to relocate his private office in the palace from the north wing to the Belgian Suite on the ground floor of the palace’s west-facing Garden Wing.

So far the restoration work has been funded through the taxpayer-funded sovereign grant and will continue to be temporarily paused each summer to allow visitors access to the Palace.

This year, the East Wing renovations were completed after having begun in 2018. This includes the famous central balcony area facing the Mall, which visitors were invited to see for the first time this summer.