London’s real Olympic legacy: paying to build the stadium twice

In 2006, on the day that the government’s estimated cost for the 2012 Olympics was jacked up from £2.75 billion to £4.25 billion, I promised to eat my hat on the steps of the Olympic stadium if the bill came to less than £10 billion. Although the official figure now stands at a mere £8.92 billion, it is a feast I am going to postpone, because we haven’t heard the last of Olympic overspending.

Two weeks ago, the London Legacy Development Corporation announced that the value of the contract with Balfour Beatty to convert the stadium for use by West Ham Football Club is to be increased from £154 million to £189.9 million. The new roof, it explained, is proving to be more complex than had at first been realised. At least we will have the consolation of getting into Guinness World Records for the longest single-span cantilevered stadium roof in the world, but Britain won’t be landing a gold medal for financial efficiency. The Olympic Legacy Development Corporation confirmed to me that the £189.9 million doesn’t include the cost of the retractable seating that will let the lower tier be rolled across the athletics track for football matches and retracted for athletics. This work has yet to be awarded. The corporation won’t say what it expects this to cost, claiming commercial sensitivity, but it has been estimated in the construction press at £20 million. Neither does the contract include the cost of fitting the stadium with the bars and restaurants which Premiership football demands.

How can it cost £200 million or more — once those extra bills come in — to convert an 80,000-seat athletics stadium to a 60,000-seat football/multi-use stadium? It cost Arsenal just £390 million to build the Emirates stadium in 2006 — and that included the cost of relocating a waste and recycling site, as well as several light industrial premises that had stood on the land.