Fury as London Olympics rob area of £86m
Jan 16 2008
By Rob Merrick, Liverpool Daily Post Correspondent
UP TO £86m will be snatched from Merseyside and Cheshire’s village halls and community groups to fund the London Olympics after a fresh raid on Lottery funds, it was claimed yesterday. Local authority leaders reacted with fury after an extra £675m was diverted from the National Lottery’s good causes pot to pay for the 2012 Games.
The move means a total of £2.17bn of Lottery cash will now be spent on the Olympics – equivalent to £35 for every person in the country. An alliance of local councils from across the North calculated that £50m would be lost from Merseyside and a further £36m from Cheshire. And it warned that the victims would be grassroots voluntary groups and projects, for whom the Lottery had offered a “lifeline”.
Among the projects typically funded by good causes grants are sports facilities and village halls and schemes helping disabled children and the homeless. In the Commons, it was claimed the raid was the equivalent of a sports pitch in every single parliamentary constituency.
Meanwhile, the Government was forced to deny it faced a further £1bn black hole in the 2012 finances, after drastically underestimating likely profits from land sales. But, despite the escalating row, the Tories and Liberal Democrats stepped back from forcing a Commons vote on the £675m diversion. Despite condemning the “financial incompetence”, they backed the package in return for a strict pledge that there would be no further raids on Lottery cash.
Last night, The Alliance – which represents 70 local councils in traditional industrial areas – said: “The Lottery has thrown a lifeline to small groups in some of the UK’s most vulnerable communities. These losses will directly impact on good causes throughout the UK, with some areas of greatest need suffer-ing the worst. There is a danger 2012 London Games could become deeply unpopular, robbing good causes to pay for more investment in the country’s most prosperous city.”
Among local authorities in The Alliance group are Knowsley, St Helens and Warrington, but not Liverpool. It demands Government reverse a previous pledge that London will enjoy the first claim on profits from the sales of Olympic land after 2012. But it is that funding stream at the centre of the alleged £1bn black hole, after it was reported that sales were now predicted to raise £800m, not the original £1.8bn. A shortfall would jeopardise the intention to repay to the National Lottery the £675m, which is technically a loan.
Insisting there was no black hole and that the £9.3bn package was “robust”, Culture Secretary James Purnell said: “There will be no further diversion from the Lottery good causes to fund the Olympics.”