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£32m to be spent sprucing up shabby streets for 2012 visitors
Jason Beattie, Chief Political Correspondent21.12.07
Key parts of London are to get a multimillion-pound facelift in the run up to the Olympics.
Organisers have set aside £32 million to spruce up the main routes to the Olympic Park and other venues for the 2012 Games.
The scheme, called the Look of London, will mean shabby streets around the Stratford site are smartened up, with benches restored and painted, graffiti removed and chewing gum blasted away.
Other measures being planned include re-painting red phone boxes, decorative planting and hanging 2012 banners.
A Government spokesman said it wants the city to look "fabulous" for the Games. However, there are no details on exactly where the money will be spent or how it will be allocated.
In a parliamentary answer, Olympics minister Tessa Jowell said: "The purpose of this budget is to help improve the look of streets en route to the Olympic Park and off-park Olympic venues by assisting with street cleaning and dressing measures.
"The responsibility for allocation of these funds will be determined nearer the time of the Games."
The Conservatives questioned whether the money, which comes from the Olympic budget and will be overseen by Ms Jowell, would be better spent on promoting tourism.
Shadow culture, media and sport secretary Hugh Robertson said £32 million was "an awful, awful lot of money" for the things mentioned by Ms Jowell.
He added: "We need to establish exactly what Look of London is and who is on it. It would have been easier to give the money to Visit London which is already there to promote the city."
Mr Robertson pointed out that Visit Britain's budget was being cut from £49 million a year to £40 million a year between now and 2011.
"The irony is that £32 million is being put in Look of London's budget at exactly the same time as the Government has cut the tourism budget," he said. "The one thing we do know from the past three or four Games is they have all boosted tourism."
A spokesman for Visit Britain said it would not comment on Look of London but said the Games had the potential to unlock a £2billion benefit for the tourism industry if there was investment from the Government.
"This money doesn't grow on trees, we have to work for it," he added.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport said the money was included in the £9.3billion budget for the Olympics.
She denied the money would be better spent on promoting tourism.
"Visit Britain will have its programme not just for London but Britain and will be announcing its Olympic plans for attracting tourists," she added.
Reader views (6)
Just think of the money that could be saved by local councils if everyone kept the bit of pavement and gutter just outside their house free from litter. Whole streets would not need to be swept. But of course that's pie in the sky. Here in Ealing, even those living in £1m+ houses, can't be bothered to bend down and remove a piece of litter right outside their front gate. We're all too posh or too lazy to do that. Whatever happened to civic pride - no-one seems bothered by litter, graffiti, fly tipping and abandoned supermarket trolleys. So long as it is outside of their garden gate, the surrounding area doesn't matter.
- Rob Andrews, Ealing, London
Why can't our streets look clean now? We're paying for it, after all. Or is it just tourists whose views matter to the government?
- Sally, London
Ah, the Olympic Sterilisation - orders of the IOC.
I'm all for clean streets but £32m sounds like a recipe for the inevitable unwanted 'environmental improvements' - and goodbye to the quirky interesting things that give the area its character.
'Look of London'? How much did that initiative cost to come up with? Not content with wrecking the Olympic site itself and turning it into the most boring and soulless expanse of investment blight ever conceived, they want to subject the surrounding areas to consultant's misguided conceptions of what appeals to tourists.
I wonder where the line will be drawn between these 'main routes' and the areas that haven't been subjected to the 'clean up'?
Will warning signs be installed to tell visitors that they’re entering an unsanitary zone?
And contrary to the propaganda, the Olympics does not boost tourism overall, according to industry experts. As reported in Travel Daily News and many other trade journals last year, "A report by the European Tour Operators Association (ETOA) clearly demonstrates that countries who host the Olympic Games suffer from a drop in tourism growth in the years surrounding the event.
There is no long-term boost to tourism, as has been widely asserted."
- Charles, Hackney, London
"Seems we only do things in this country for the benefit of others, rather than those who live and pay taxes here."
Others in this case being business, because, as we are being told, "The Olympics are good for business".
I have always wondered what percentage of Londoners actually want(ed) the Olympics.
- Robert Zimmerman, London
This is a travesty. We do not want Olympics. Can we have street cleaning now?
- Jacqueline, Hampstead, London
Crikey, we have to wait until then to have clean streets. Surely us Londoners deserve to have our capital gleaming all year round! So why are we keeping up appearances just because the Olympics are coming to town!
Seems we only do things in this country for the benefit of others, rather than those who live and pay taxes here.
- Nic Zuraw, London, UK
