Boris Johnson will be asked to justify his management of London’s Stadium as part of an in-depth investigation into the “skyrocketing” costs of converting the Olympic Stadium for West Ham.The investigation, commissioned by London Mayor Sadiq Khan was announced last year after transformation costs increased again by £51m. The costs include an estimated £8m every year to move supposedly retractable seats, installed to bring football fans closer to the action, off the track to allow athletics every summer. The bill for conversion has risen from £272m to £323m, and the total cost of the stadium to £752m.
The investigation’s terms of reference, published on Friday, make it clear that Mr Johnson, now Foreign Secretary, is one of a number of officials who will be asked to explain their conduct during the stadium’s troubled path since the Olympics.
The investigation will look at every stage of the stadium’s design and construction, the key decisions that informed it, as well as the future operation of the stadium. It will make recommendations as to how to make the stadium more profitable, and reduce running costs that currently fall on the taxpayer.
The review will examine the role of stadium operator London Stadium 185, owned by French company VINCI, which has a 25-year deal to run the stadium, and may also consider the future of the stadium ownership structure. The investigation will also examine the original design decisions, taken by the then Labour Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell, Lord Coe, Ken Livingstone and the London 2012 leadership.
Announcing the terms of reference Mr Khan said: “There are some huge questions that need to be answered about the financing of the London Stadium. We need to find out how on earth the transformation costs were allowed to skyrocket, and whether appropriate checks were made before key decisions were made. But just as important in this process will be looking to the future to ensure we get the Stadium into a situation where we are able to reduce its cost to the taxpayer and it can operate as a successful multi-purpose stadium that our city can be proud of.”
Three independent companies have been asked to bid to carry out the investigation, with terms of reference that include examination of:
:: All relevant construction, financial and operation arrangements
:: Key decisions, contractual commitments and financial projections
:: Due diligence and negotiations
:: The stadium’s ongoing financial viability and operating costs
Here we go again. It’s bash the Hammers time. F##k ’em. COYI X
The Mayor’s going to take it back into the ownership of the Corporation of London and turn it in a Mosque!! 😂😂😂
One possible outcome could be an attempt to sell it to West Ham after all and get us to pay the full running fees. Just saying.
We might need a big mortgage though.
I’ve always thought the rationale for taking the stadium is to wait for the politics and legacy of the Olympics to die down, purchase the stadium for a knock down price and then rebuild it with a state of the art football stadium. That moment to take ownership may arrive faster than we think. Bottom line, its worth nothing to anybody else, just a white elephant.
Only one way we will be offered to buy, if the price is anywhere near what Spurs and Chelsea have to spend on their new grounds, otherwise this will be dragged through numerous courts.
And I thought we chose the OS option because we couldn’t afford to build a new ground…
Sean I make you right. The ground will be sold to West Ham but it won’t need a big mortgage at all. What will the stadium make pa? I bet it barely breaks even over the next 10 years. They sure aren’t making money on us and we have it for 9 months a year for the next 99 years!! Never mind what it cost the stadiums value is determined by what it makes and that is going to be precious little. If they accepted £75M from us I’d wager that’s as much as they will make over the next 20 or 30 years from the stadium. Sure there will be an outcry but that’s actually a good deal for the tax payer as things stand.
They budgeted it wrong. They charged us £2.5m per add ons, they get most of the catering rights, naming rights and some advertising,
The problem is they budgeted £300,000 to move the seats each year and it costs £8m
They budgeted £300,000 for stewarding and no police but it is going to cost around £1.3m per year
They over spend another £51m on the transformation and on it goes.
You only have to visit the Stadium and see all that scaffolding and try to imagine the effort required to switch the Stadium between Football and Athletics modes – it must be an enormous cost and will be a drain on the Stadium for the foreseeable future. The economics are balmy and the Mayor of London is right to get the hump about it – it’s going to be a massive money-pit that the so-called ‘stakeholders’ are going to have to pick up for the foreseeable future. A continual drain on the public purse, or to put it another way on you and me.
West Ham can’t be blamed for seizing upon the bargain of the century, and baling out the ‘stakeholders’ by relieving them of what would have been a complete ‘white elephant’ – as it stands the Stadium can never make a profit, indeed all these ‘stakeholders’ seem to be capable of is limping from one unforeseen problem to another.
The problem to me is all this empty space that is around the Stadium, dead space, that is there to accomodate all this switching backward and forward between modes.
The solution seems quite straight forward, build a purpose-built Athletics stadium to hold say 20-25 thousand, maybe at a redeveloped Crystal Palace or somewhere in the wasteland around the present Olympic Stadium – radical I know but it seems obvious to me!
The present Olympic Stadium can then again be redeveloped as a proper Football Stadium – which all of us surely want!