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That the Palace of Westminster is rotting, insanitary and am increasingly dangerous place to work is not in doubt. How to fix it, however, has been troubling members of parliament for years.

Parliament’s Restoration and Renewal (R&R) Client Board has published a report, Delivering restoration and renewal of the Palace of Westminster: the costed proposals, to help both the House of Commons and the House of Lords determine the way forward.

As might have been expected, the cost estimates are now heading towards three times what they were 10 years, when the top number was £5.7bn. Now it is £18.7bn.

The Client Board is recommending initial phase one works over seven years, capped at £3bn. This work would start this year and include building temporary chambers and office space to support future moves, preparations for the restoration of the medieval Cloister Court, interior refurbishment of Victoria Tower, starting underground construction, and building a river jetty for construction deliveries.

In the longer term, the Client Board recommends that it should be a straight choice between emptying parliament to let the builders crack on or let MPs and peers remain in place while work takes place – options described as the ‘full decant’ and ‘enhanced maintenance and improvement+ (EMI+)’ options. The previous partial decant option – Lords first, then Commons – is now off the table.

With the full decant option it would take between 19 and 24 years to complete the work and cost up to £11.5bn, or £490m a year on average. The EMI+ option would take up to 45 years to complete and cost up to £18.7bn, at an average annual cost of £310m.

Ten years ago the full decant option was costed at £3.5bn; doing the repairs with MPs and peers staying put was costed at £5.7bn.

The Client Board is calling for a final decision on the way forward by 2030.

Maintaining and repairing the Palace of Westminster currently costs £1.5m a week.

The cost of delaying starting the delivery phase of the programme is estimated at £70m per year at current price. There would also be a further £250m to £350m inflationary impact on construction costs across the whole of the programme for each year of delay, the report says.