The Queen may charge visitors £10 to watch the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace as she ponders emergency measures to meet her repair bills.

The ceremony, whose origins date back to the Restoration in 1660, is one of the capital’s most famous free attractions, drawing 4,000 onlookers on a typical summer’s day.

The plan has been drawn up by senior royal aides after the government refused a request for an extra £1m a year to help fund urgent repairs to the crumbling palaces.

Each weekday morning at 11.30am, tourists gather outside Buckingham Palace to peer through the railings at the changing of the guard.

The military pomp of the changing of the Queen’s Guard is accompanied by a Guards band wearing bright red tunics and bearskins playing traditional military marches, songs from West End shows and sometimes pop music.

If they have operational commitments, other infantry units take part instead.

The ceremony is held daily from April to July and on alternate dates throughout the rest of the year.

If an average of 200 visitors per day pay £10 to be admitted within the palace forecourt they would generate around £500,000 a year. “We could let paying visitors onto the forecourt to get the best view,” said a senior aide.

The proposal would, however, mark a new intrusion into the privacy of the royal family. Although fee-paying visitors have been admitted to the state rooms at Buckingham Palace since 1993 – adults are charged £15 – tours take place only while the royals are not in residence.

Other money-making schemes being considered include charging admission to the Buckingham Palace gardens, currently accessible only to people with a coveted invitation to one of the Queen’s garden parties, and offering tours of the royal kitchens.

Courtiers say the schemes are a last resort, with one admitting: “There is a real danger that the palace starts to become like a theme park.” He added: “But all the dignified options have already been taken.”

Courtiers, however, charged with maintaining the fabric of the palaces, are adamant that matters are coming to a head. Earlier this year a lump of masonry the size of a shoebox fell from the facade of Buckingham Palace, narrowly missing the Princess Royal’s parked car.

The glass roof of the Buckingham Palace picture gallery is leaking, posing a threat to the priceless collection hanging there, which includes works by Rembrandt. The gallery’s silk walls have already been stained by water dripping through, and the cost of repairs is estimated at £1.8m.

The eastern facade of the main quadrangle is crumbling and requires a £3m repair, and two-thirds of the lead, slate and copper roof is due for replacement over the next decade at a cost of £750,000 a year.

Works to rewire Buckingham Palace for the first time in 40 years and to clean the Bath stone facades of the quadrangle, which have turned a discoloured orange, are on hold.

The Queen is also facing a £6m bill to replace an expanse of the roof at Windsor Castle equivalent to the area of Centre Court and No 1 Court at Wimbledon. At Frogmore, in the grounds of Home Park at Windsor, parts of the ceiling of Victoria and Albert’s mausoleum have fallen in.

Officials are bemused by the apparent indifference of the Treasury to their plight. Their attempts to secure extra funding have been rebuffed for more than two years, and they are resigned to an even cooler response under Gordon Brown’s premiership. One senior courtier said: “We are deeply frustrated.”

For the second year running the Palace has submitted a request for a budget increase of £1m to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

The Queen’s aides have been told it is unlikely to be agreed because funds have been diverted to the Olympics. The budget for its sporting venues has risen by almost £1 billion since it was awarded the games in 2005.

“If the money doesn’t come through, we will have to look at other options,” said a spokeswoman for the Queen.

Lord St John of Fawsley, a constitutional expert, described the idea as “absolutely repellent”. He said:“We need to keep up our appearances as a nation. The government should assume its responsibility and pay for the repairs to the palace. We are one of the richest countries in the world and these buildings belong to the nation.”

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