Taxpayers To Pick Up Stadium Tab

The UK parliament will ask Olympic officials involved in the collapse of the London 2012 Stadium deal to explain how they’ve blown £100 million of taxpayer money.

That’s the estimated cost of having to tear up a proposed deal to sell the building to the West Ham United soccer club, which won the bidding war to occupy the new venue.

The deal fell apart once it was realised that the legal actions brought by rival London soccer clubs and bidders Tottenham Hotspur and Leyton Orient could drag on so long that nobody would be able to occupy the building until three years after the Olympics.

That would put a huge question mark over London’s bid to stage the 2017 world athletics championship.

Both soccer clubs have asked for a judicial review of the decision to choose West Ham, actions which were scheduled for the High Court in London Oct. 18.

They also question the legality of Newham Council’s decision to stump up £40 million toward the West Ham bid, saying it breaches European Union regulations regarding state aid to private companies.

Members of the Olympic Park Legacy Company, which oversees the future use of the stadium, will likely be called up before the Public Accounts Committee Dec. 14.

The Public Accounts Committee, which is responsible for overseeing government expenditure to ensure it’s effective and honest, is headed by Margaret Hodge, Labour MP for Barking.

She told the Daily Telegraph she expects her parliamentary colleagues will question the fact that the near £100 million cost of reconfiguring the stadium will now come from the public purse.

The new plan is for the building to remain in public ownership and be leased to the new occupier for about £2 million per year.

A pre-condition of the new bidding process, which is to start in January, is that the successful bidder must undertake to retain the running track that would encircle the soccer field.

The National Audit Office, the public spending watchdog, is preparing a value-for-money assessment of the 2012 Games.