Speaker's coach (2020)
Request
I understand that the Speaker's State Coach remains the property of the House of Commons despite being currently on loan to Arlington Court.
Could you please give me an itemised breakdown of all costs associated with the Coach since June 2009?
Response
This information is held by the House of Commons.
The House holds two sets of information about costs.
The first are costs which have been budgeted for as part of the proposal to loan the Coach to Arlington Court (Table 1).
Please note that, due to their age, our records on this subject are incomplete. The information attached only forms part of a proposal and the costs had not been incurred at the time it was created. We do not hold the invoices or receipts showing that these costs were actually incurred. This is because, in line with our retention policy, receipts, invoices and other information related to the process of transactions is only held for three years. You can find out more about Parliament’s retention policy on out parliamentary webpages. However, the House does hold – with the exception of the Travel and Subsistence category – a list of Purchase Order numbers for the items listed in column B, each with the amounts listed in column E. Still, note that this does not confirm that these amounts were actually incurred.
The second set of costs relate to ongoing conservation and maintenance of the Coach, since the loan was established (Table 2).
Lastly, please note that, due to the age of the records involved, we have not been able to rule out that some costs from the two sources of information above may overlap.