THE Scottish Parliament is spending around £100,000 a year on cleaning its windows, it emerged today.
Figures revealed by the cross-party Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body also show that the total bill for interior and exterior cleaning of the controversial Holyrood building is approaching £500,000.
Window cleaning is expensive because the a
wkward angle of many of the windows on the £414 million building, which means abseilers have to be brought in for the job.
The MSP who uncovered the figures today said parliament chiefs needed to investigate ways to bring the massive bill down.
SNP backbencher Alex Neil said: "It seems an awful lot of money. Obviously it is proving an expensive building to keep up.
"I don't think a lot of thought went into the maintenance costs when it was being designed. What we have got to do now is see if there are ways of minimising the costs a bit more.
"In ten years' time we will be facing even bigger bills because of the extra costs that come with a building getting older.We should be looking all the time to see where savings can be made."
According to the SPCB's figures, window cleaning cost £108,671 last year and has cost a further £87,279 so far this year.
The bill for gardening and landscaping last year was £39,059 and so far this year is £43,784.
And the interior and exterior cleaning costs were £492,244 last year and £460,137 so far this year.
Independent Lothians MSP Margo MacDonald, a long-standing critic of the building, said the costs were "horrendous".
And she said she thought there was little could be done now to retrieve the situation.
She said: "It's much too late. The warnings we put up were swept aside. I don't think anything can be done about it now. Presumably they go for the most competitive tender."
Ms MacDonald said the big bill for cleaning costs was due to the "self-indulgence of the design" with all the awkward spaces and difficult-to-reach nooks and crannies around the building.
But she said: "Unless we are all prepared to take it in shifts and bring in our dusters, I don't see any other way."
A parliament spokesman said: "Holyrood is an award-winning building of individual and iconic design and its maintenance requirements are those associated with running a landmark building."
The full article contains 408 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
