Peter Hoskin

What chance a lasting Olympic legacy?

One of the major factors behind London’s successful bid for the 2012 Olympic Games was the promise to create a lasting “Olympics legacy” – to rejuvenate some of the poorer areas of London; to get more people participating in sport; to create a set of sporting facilities which will promise future success for British athletes, and so on.  But – as the Standard reports today – there are signs that the Government might fail to deliver on (at least some of) that promise.

The figures they’ve got their hands on show that, whilst London as a whole met the Government’s 2002 target to get 85 percent of schools providing their pupils with at least two hours of sporting activity a week, some 15 of the 32 London boroughs didn’t.  Crucially, many of the Olympic host boroughs – including Greenwich, Tower Hamlets and Hackney – are among those 15. 

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