Olympics budget under scrutiny

• olympics
• London 2012

In August 2005 NICVA reported that the original revised budget of £3.5billion was “grossly underestimated” pointing out specifically that the costs of security seemed “totally inadequate”.

Tessa Jowell, has recently revealed that the security bill for the games has risen to £1.2bn (six times the figure in the bid). The original bid budget to host the games in London was £2.4billion with £750m (31%) coming from National Lottery good causes money. A second raid on the lottery raised the contribution from good causes money to £2.2bn towards an overall cost of £9.3billion.

National Lottery distributors are also funding the Olympic Legacy Trust to the tune of £34m from their own incomes.

Tessa Jowell has not ruled out the possibility of exceeding the current budget by stating: "No one can confidently predict exactly what the final amount of contingency we require will be by 2012, but all the analysis we have suggests we are in a decent position."