PM/Parliament to share Red House

The Office of the Prime Minister and the Parliament are to share the Red House until the Parliament gets its permanent home. It is understood that Cabinet took a decision in July which set out a phased programme for occupation of the southern side of the Red House building by the Office of Prime Minister.  Renovation designs have been amended accordingly and work is now proceeding apace with a view to fixing this part of the building for occupation as soon as possible by the PM office. The southern side is currently vacant.

The plan is to have Whitehall, the current office of the Prime Minister, reserved for hosting official Government functions. The plan is also to have the Parliament eventually relocated to the purpose-built facility, leaving the entire Red House for occupation by the Prime Minister’s office. Pending the construction of the purpose-built facility, however,  it is planned that both the Prime Minister and the Parliament would occupy the Red House, the PM occupying the southern side and the legislature the northern. Sources indicate that the original refurbishment of the Red House was predicated on the necessity to expand the Parliament facilities to accomodate the committee system and provide MPs with more space. In the light of the Cabinet’s recent decision, additional facilities for the Parliament’s necessary expansion would not be available to the Parliament in the short-run. Sources also disclosed that Government had asked the Canadian Parliament to assist in the preparation of a design brief for the new Parliament building.

This design brief will be set out for the benefit of the architect. It will state exactly what the users/owners of  Parliament want — what the building should look like, the space requirements of MPs and what additional rooms are required. Sources said it was no use reinventing the wheel and if there was an excellent Parliament building somewhere else in the world, it made sense to go to a country where the building was more advanced than ours. “The time to get it right is in preparing the design brief. There is no architect in Trinidad and Tobago who has ever built a Parliament building, so generally speaking we don’t have that kind of experience,” a Government source stated, as he sought to justify the decision to seek expertise in Canada. “These kinds of buildings are designed once in a lifetime. So it is almost impossible that a local architect would have had the opportunity to gather that kind of experience,” the source stated.

The Canadian Parliament has therefore been asked to assist in the preparation of this brief. It is the first process in preparing for the new Parliament and would form the basis on which the architect can design a building. This document would also form the basis on which Government would go out to tender for the new building. The brief could be a very simple thing or could be very complicated. For example the design brief for the airport was over 400 pages long. The site for the new Parliament building is still to be confirmed. Government has suggested the block  in Port-of-Spain which encompasses St Vincent St, Knox Abercromby St and Duke St. Although there are serious objections to this site, sources said it seemed that it is a foregone conclusion that the new Parliament would be constructed on this block. Government is also firm that the Red House would become the office of the Prime Minister.