The £400million media centre for the 2012 Olympics is caught up in a funding crisis, it can be revealed today.

The financial squeeze has led to fears that the consortium building the broadcast and press centre will not be able to raise money from banks to cover its £ 200million share of the cost.

Building is due to start in spring although the final cost, design and legacy have still to be decided.

The construction company Carillion and developers Igloo, which make up the private consortium, hope to make money from the 1.3million sq ft of office space that will be created by two buildings - the International Broadcast and Main Press centres.

But senior Olympic sources have told the Standard that raising private funding is proving difficult. With that amount of space on offer in an out-oftheway and deprived area of Hackney, there are fears offices will lie empty.

One source has even suggested the media centre could be housed in temporary buildings and demolished after the games.

A source said today: "It's difficult because, in this climate, no one wants to lend. The media centre is proving the hardest part of the Olympic Park to secure private funding for."

Without its share of the private financing, the Government will be forced to dip into a £1billion contingency fund set aside for emergencies. The fund is included in the total £ 9.3billion cost of the Olympics.

The emergency fund is likely to be needed to cover the £1billion cost of the athletes' village, the largest component of the 500-acre Olympic Park in Stratford.

With house prices falling, there are fears private developers will not be able to recoup their money from selling on the athletes' village as housing after the Games.

It has been suggested Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, would not relish using public money to bail out the Games.

Hackney Council is hoping the media centre will turn Hackney Wick into a creative centre - a sort of Soho for the East End.

But the Olympic Development Authority chairman John Armitt told a fringe meeting at the Labour Party conference this week: "The reality is that the situation is changing by the day. The amount of financing available two months ago was less than six months ago and it's even less after last week."