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63 civil servants working on Olympics 'gravy train'
Matthew Beard, Evening Standard1 Apr 2008
The Government was today accused of an "extraordinary waste of money" after it emerged that 63 public workers are employed to oversee the 2012 Games.
Figures released to Parliament show that the Government Olympic Executive - the Whitehall body scrutinising contracts for the Games - employs 49 civil servants and 14 agency staff.
This prompted questions whether such a large team was necessary to oversee the Olympic Delivery Authority which itself employs around 200 staff.
The ODA, the quango responsible for building Games venues, has itself passed day-to-day management of the building programme onto "delivery partner" CLM at cost of £400million.
Figures released in a parliamentary written answer today revealed that up to nine of the senior GOE staff are being paid six-figure salaries. These include director-general Jeremy Beeton on £220,000 and the director of build and finance at £180,000.
A row over 2012 salaries flared up two months ago when it emerged that senior executives at the ODA are being paid up to £110,000 more than previously thought. Seven of them had salaries of more than £200,000.
But Olympics minister Tessa Jowell defended the pay scales, saying it was the price to pay for rigorous scrutiny of the £9.3billion Games budget. She said in the written answer: "Senior staff members of GOE bring significant high-level commercial and financial experience in major, complex construction and infrastructure programmes and policy delivery in order to provide effective oversight of this process.Their pay rates reflect this."
She said the ODA's task was "without precedent and is one of the biggest jobs in the construction industry" and pay levels were comparable with industry levels.
But shadow Olympics minister Hugh Robertson said: "It seems an extraordinary waste of money to monitor what [organising committee] Locog and the ODA are doing.
"Both those bodies have significant private sector expertise and it would make much better sense to free them up to build and deliver the Games rather than waste public money strangling them with red tape and monitoring requirements."
The 2012 payroll is boosted by Locog where staff levels will peak at 2,500 though Locog is funded entirely from commercial revenues such as sponsorship and TV deals.
A spokesman for the Department for Culture Media and Sport said: "The Government Olympic Executive is staffed at the level needed to exercise proper financial oversight of 2012 and to ensure the maximum legacy for the whole country from staging the world's biggest sporting event.
"Our staffing and budget have been scrutinised and approved by the Treasury as being necessary for a project of this size and complexity."
