Not for the first time Andrew Gilligan has been upsetting the government with a news report.
In Saturday's Telegraph he claimed to have unearthed an extra £2.7bn of "hidden" money invested out of the public purse into the Olympics which the government have failed to tell any one about.
Gilligan also suggested that most of this information had come from Freedom of Information requests to public bodies.
Slam dunk for Gilligan and his persistence you might think.
Speaking to the DCMS today I found them telling a different story however. It says it happily compiled all of the information for Gilligan as FOIs "take forever".
It also claims his figures are "bogus" and "wholly misleading" and I think as ever both sides have a point.
The DCMS says that much of the £2.7bn figure quoted cannot be accurately labelled Olympic costs as they would have happened as a consequence of regeneration of the East End with or without the Games.
Most significantly the funds Gilligan highlights for the upgrading of parts of the Transport for London network were committed in 2004 - before the UK won the Olympic bid. Additionally the Homes and Communities Agency £110m grant to fund affordable housing on the Olympic Village is part of their National Affordable Housing Programme, which funds housing where it is needed. This grant it says is fulfilling a need for affordable housing in East London, which existed before Games happened. Strangely though it says the biggest chunk - the LDA's land acquisition costs of £1.15bn - are not Olympic costs as compulsory purchase orders are only allowed for regeneration purposes, not sports events. It points out that much of this will be paid back through land sales.
So I guess the DCMS is right - Gilligan was undoubtedly being a little cute in suggesting he had prized from the government shadowy details of spend on the Olympics. But I think Gilligan has importantly highlighted the fact that the £9.35bn budget that central government is touting is by no means the whole story when it comes to taxpayer spend on the Games.
First, Gilligan is right to point out that all sorts of agencies like local authorities, British Waterways Board, the Environment Agency, etc, have Olympic budgets which are not declared as part of the DCMS budget, see http://www.gamesmonitor.org.uk/node/814.
Second, the Olympic authorities constantly claim all kinds of Legacy benefits which are not related to the Olympics. For example the Stratford City development is being included in the Legacy see http://www.gamesmonitor.org.uk/node/676. It is a bit thick for them to now cry foul when someone else puts together a list like this when they've been doing exactly the same for a long time.
Third, to exclude regeneration costs is also pretty thick. The Olympics was and is sold as a Legacy project and this includes regeneration of the East End. So taking out purchase costs on the grounds of regeneration costs or their supposed recovery through sales is just sleight of hand. Who knows whether the costs will be recovered but we can be sure if they are this will be another Olympic benefit!
Fourth, the reality is regeneration was going to happen in the Stratford area regardless of the Olympics so this justification is rubbish anyway. Just take the £4billion Stratford City programme already in existence and a free standing project which did not depend on the Olympics. The following comment was made in an article in the Property Newsletter, “Prior believes the long-term regeneration elements and development opportunities will happen with or without the Olympics. What may differ is the pace of change. In the event of a successful bid, developers in partnerships might have to play a longer-term game – the land would not be freed for its end use until after the 2012 event.” Note, he says the Olympics will slow up development! Jason Prior is the leading masterplanner for the Olympics. http://www.gamesmonitor.org.uk/node/640
Fifth, as for claims about the Athletes' Village it has to be pointed out there is no housing legacy from the Village despite the oft repeated claim as the land was designated for housing and permission had already been given to build housing there, see http://www.gamesmonitor.org.uk/node/667. As far as spending on affordable housing we can be sure the government will claim any affordable housing on the Olympic Park as a legacy, however it comes to be there.
Then there is the false claim of the 'largest new park in Europe for 150 years', the unsupported projection of 50,000 jobs which even the LDA says should be treated 'with caution', the claims for housing benefits which fail to take into account the extensive housing developments which are happening regardless of the Olympics, the lack of evidence that elite events like the Olympics boost sports participation or produce health benefits, the money taken away from Lottery funded children's sport, the statements from tourism operators that tourism actually suffers from the Olympics.....
The above commentator, Mr Cheyne, is correct in his analysis of "hidden" Olympic costs. Here is a concrete example:
A new structure has been built across the Prescott Channel (one of waterways in the Olympic Park). Its purpose to make previously tidal waters un-tidal. Why? No smelly mud at low tide. Why? Property development. Why? So that the odor and sight of smelly mud eliminated at low tide. Cost? Around £30million though exact cost unclear as various agencies seem to dodge the question. Cost mostly not in Olympic budget. It would not have been built had London not won the Olympic bid. It is largely pointless and will have many negative effects it is being paid for by the Environment Agency, British Waterways, and a couple of other agencies, with the ODA only contributing a small amount.
The cost of this barrage does not stop there as the water behind the barrage turns fetid due to the lack of flushing by tidal water. This means British Waterways and the Environment Agency now have to plow money into schemes (mostly chemical) to keep the water clean. Cost of keeping water clean? £millions and ongoing. Included in Olympic budget? No.
There will be hundreds projects that are Olympic related but not included in the Olympic budget. Mr Gilligan's assertion is, in my view, likely to be a serious UNDER estimating the true Olympic budget which will, in reality, never be accurately known.
Are you talking about the Three Mills Lock, perchance? Seems a perfectly decent bit of civil engineering to me, but there you go. Ironically, although it was originally intended to provide for both construction traffic during the building of the Olympic Park *and* providing a pleasant non-tidal canal environment afterwards for pleasure boats and visitors (with consequent upward effect on the value of land owned by British Waterways, incidentally), it's opened late, so will actually be *more* of a legacy project than an Olympic one. I've not seen any other suggestions that there is a problem of water quality, merely that there isn't as much construction traffic using it as the ODA originally announced, which is an embarrassment for them.
According to the British Waterways document from 2006 outlining the project the new structure is merely reinstating the position until the mid-80s, when a previous structure was removed. I'm therefore sceptical that this is such an OMG TERRIBLE WASTE OF MONEY as Gilligan and co. claim. Mind you, I'd be sceptical of Gilligan telling me it was raining.
To correct Tom's comment above, from the 1930s to the 1950s - not the 1980s - there was a simple sluice in place on the Prescott Channel which maintained a semi-tidal regime in the Bow Back Rivers in order to power tidal mills.
It prevented the water level dropping at low tide, but it allowed the water to rise at high tide. This is not the same as the total tidal lock-out of the new water control structure.
Thousands of tonnes a day of barge traffic passed along Limehouse Cut and through Bow Locks during the heyday of canal freight, proving how pointless and extravagant the Three Mills Locks are. If the idea was to encourage freight traffic, Bow Creek / Three Mills Lock was a ludicrous option due to the difficulty of navigating Bow Creek and the narrow tidal window available.
This was why the Limehouse Cut was constructed, and precisely why Three Mills Lock is not a perfectly decent bit of civil engineering - it is misguided and dishonest.