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Olympic legacy projects to be cut by £21 million after accounts bungle
Matthew Beard, Sports News Correspondent16.09.09
Projects intended to deliver a legacy of the 2012 Olympics have been cut by the London Development Agency after a bungled land deal blew a £160 million hole in its budget.
There will be reductions of more than £21 million this year affecting 2012-related programmes run by the LDA, undermining Boris Johnson's aim of using the Games to make Londoners more active and improve their employment chances.
The LDA has been forced to make the cutbacks after poor internal accounting was blamed for the cost of buying the 500-acre Olympic site in Stratford rising to £1.1 billion.
At its board meeting today, the LDA will submit cost-cutting proposals with the axe due to fall on a dozen Olympics schemes. Savings will be made by:
* A £2 million cut in funding to High Street 2012, a facelift to the final stretch of the marathon route in Tower Hamlets and Newham.
* A £1 million cut to Art in the Park, a project backed by Tate director Sir Nicholas Serota to decorate bridges and underpasses in the Olympic Park.
* A £1.6 million cut to the skills and jobs scheme for the five Olympic boroughs and a £5 million cut to redundancy prevention for smaller businesses.
* Scrapping the £170,000 scheme to support the disabled in Olympic jobs.
* Scrapping the £150,000 study to count the jobs created by the Games and cutting an Olympic legacy evaluation by £25,000.
* Cutting a taxi driver diversity programme by £150,000.
* Cutting the Building Energy Efficiency Programme by £2.5 million.
A further £250,000 will be saved on schemes for volunteers at sports events, training young sports officials and umpires and promoting the business benefits of the Games.
Critics say the cuts will deny Londoners advantages from the Olympics. Conservative London Assembly member Andrew Boff said: “We are effectively going back on some of the promises made about hosting the Games. While the bricks and mortar projects of the Olympic sports venues are having cash lavished on them the legacy is being undermined.”
The disability charity Scope attacked the cuts to the employment scheme. Its director of policy and campaigns, Ruth Scott, said: “If this scheme was not found to demonstrate good value for money then consideration should be given to developing an alternative scheme that does, instead of scrapping it.”
An LDA spokesman said: “If the system of improved financial controls had been in place earlier we would have identified these projects and stopped them then. Lots of these projects are on a three-year cycle and would have come to an end this year anyway.”
Reader views (12)
This all seems to be about some political egos trying to be massaged.
I have actually heard nothing from the athletes about how excited they are for this event which says it all.
What a waste of time and energy on a games where we only win medals in posh eltie sports most normal people cannot take part in even if they were really attracted to them.
- Mark, Watford
This is going to be another wasted Nu Labor white elephant. Londoners can expect to pay taxes for this Stretford based hole.
- Jacqueline, Hampstead, London
Will the senior people within the Olympic Delivery Authourity have their bonuses cut? No? I thought as much!
- Michael, London
What a fiasco that has been from day 1, the disabled are always the first target and they talk about local jobs for local people "yes LDA hosts boroughs do have disabled people living in them" but rge LDA refuse to meet with them. Everyone wants answers and those should be accounable and what a unique time this article has come out. I yes am a disabled person that lives in one of the hosts boroughs and on 25 September the GLA host a Disability Capital event at the excel centre where the topic is the 2012 Olympic Games and how accessible London will be? Guess what even Boris our London Mayor is not attending Why? For the said quote for the Games to be accissible please do me a favour when many disabled people cannot even find work or be able to travel to their local shopping centre or visit family around London why because many of the train stations are inaccessible. I call for a public enquiry and for those like Boris, Jowell and Coe to attend a joint borough Olympic Community Public Event and will know doubt blame others along the way apart from yourselves. If you cannot do that you all really need to think about your role in 2012 if you cannot face local people or attend the Disability Capitial Event on 25 September 2009 at Excel Centre
- Ron Newman, Hackney England
I hope Londoners demand that Jowell, Coe, Livingstone, et al face a public enquiry into their handling of this fiasco. There was a report in the press yesterday that the accountants they appointed had "no accounting qualifications". Who were these people? Who appointed them? It sounds like another of Livingstone's "jobs for the boys". The whole think stinks.
- R.F.York, Yorks, UK
Cost will be doubled by the time this white elephant waste of public money is ready.How many more black holes will be found over the next few years?
- Mike, London England and once GREAT Britain
The Olympic bid was won on lies thanks to Ken Livingstone and Tessa Jowell who only remembered afterward that there was a need to add VAT. The estimated costs started increasing days after the announcement.What a total waste of taxpayers money when we have pensioners choosing whether to heat or eat, people dying in hospital needlessly, schools filled to capacity; we need more nurses, police officers and teachers - the list goes on!
- Margaret, Sidcup
In 2012 . . .
- Britain and in particular London is likely to still be in a recession
- unemployment is likely to be 3.2+ million regardless of which Party in running the country at that point (as a direct result of the last 11 or so years of New Labour's management of UK plc)
- the cost of public transport in London will be shamefully expensive (even to tourists who will also feel that they are being riped-off)
- the cost to individual Londoners of hosting the 2012 Olympics will likely be an extra £50.00 - £100.00 per month in local taxes (after all, somebody, somewhere is going to have to foot the bill even if our current New Labour government and the Olympic Committee don't necessarily believe this to be the case)
- the effect of ALL the cutbacks due to riculously bad planning at inception will truthfully mean that there is little, if any, legacy for London from the Olympic Games
- the harm that the pathetic Games are likely to cause not only to London's tourist industry but to Britain's tourist industry as a whole could be catastrophic.
Clearly, for those getting paid bundles in consultancy and other fees & remunerations to set up the 2012 London Olympics it will be business as usual. Hey, who else in their right minds would employ these people on similar remuneration packages!
That said, the most likely legacy for London is the 2012 London Olympics being referred to as "The Bungled Olympics of 2012" in future history books!
- Fraser, Telford Park
The "budget" (and I use that word loosely) for the games, at the moment, actually stands at £12BN (including £2BN running costs).
Isn't funny how those "in charge" conveniently forget to add on the £2BN running costs whenever they talk about the costs?
For why?
They are trying to keep the headline figure reported in the media below the psychological break point of £10BN.
Unfortunately for the politicians, they will learn that the trouble with black holes is that they just keep growing.
- Ken Frost, Brighton UK
I worked in the LDA a few years ago and the internal processes were designed at great expense by a never ending stream of very expensive external consultants. The processes were then more or less completely ignored in an organisational culture and leadership at that time was more appropriate to a capital city of a banana republic than one of the world's top capitals.
The waste of our money in the LDA was disgraceful then so I am pleased that the incompetence continues to be exposed and I hope those responsible are summarily dismissed.
However, given the LDA's strategic inability to date to develop a vision of legacy that could be effectively integrated with the ODA's delivery of venues, I fear we will see very little real legacy after the games.
This will mean taxpayers £9bn investment in the Olympics and Legacy will not have been justified.
- Jim, London
Sack the lot of them and cancel the games. Why should tax payers be made fund this debacle.
- R.F., Yorks, UK
Oh, do come on! The numbers never added up before they started so anyone who thought there'd be any legacy projects must be living in cloud cuckoo land. There'll just be a massive debt to be serviced. These promises of projects were just there to keep the local population sweet. It's called the 'three card trick'.
- Threaded, Roskilde, Denmark
