The London 2012 Olympics were originally projected to cost £2.37bn. Now the figures are between £12bn and £24bn.
The cost of the Olympic and Paralympic Games is approximately six times the £2.37 billion pounds that was originally quoted when London bid for the Games in 2005.
That original public sector funding package, which is primarily cash to build the venues and provide security and policing, was increased in 2007 to approximately £9.3bn after a review of the figures.
However the extra money, revealed by Sky comes on top of this £9.3 bn. The additional cash includes spends such as more anti-doping control officers, money for local councils for their Olympic torch relay programmes, cash spent on legacy schemes, paying tube workers not to strike, governmental operational costs, the cost of the Olympic Park Legacy Company, legal bills over the stadium tenancy decision and extra cash to UK Sport.
The figures also take into account the cost of buying the land for the venues at £766 million, remediation of that land and legal costs associated with that.
The additional money calculated by Sky does not include extra counter terrorism funding of £1.131bn being allocated to the police despite a ministerial statement saying “much of this capacity will be devoted to the Olympics in 2012”. Nor does it include the £4.4bn budgets of the security and intelligence services.
It’s not rare for a major, global event to go over budget, however, London 2012 has taken this notion to new heights. How does one go about spending an extra £10 billion?
