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MPs attack £757m 'lottery' of Wembley

Patrick Hennessy|Evening Standard|Deputy Political Editor
13 April 2012

The fiasco of the £757 million new Wembley Stadium was laid bare today in a damning report into the project by MPs.

The all-party public accounts committee attacked the Government and its Sport England agency for pouring public cash into the stadium for no return.

Wembley is scheduled to reopen "early" in 2006, nearly six years after the old stadium hosted its final competitive match.

But today committee chairman Edward Leigh, a former Tory minister, branded the rebuilding process, which was

dogged for years by chaos and nearly failed to get off the ground at all, a "scandal" and a "waste of public money".

The committee found:

  • Sport England handed over £120 million of lottery money at the beginning of the redevelopment project with no guarantee that any of the cash would ever be repaid. No proper contract was signed by ministers and, if the stadium had not been built, the entire public outlay would have disappeared
  • The public cost of the project rose to £161million after further contributions of £20million from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport and £21 million from the London Development Agency
  • In 1998 the stadium was estimated to cost £320 million and be ready by 2002. It will be completed four years later at a cost of £757 million, mainly from the private sector
  • Some £20million of public cash was earmarked for an athletics track, though athletics may never be staged at the new Wembley
  • The cost per seat of the new 89,000-capacity venue is £8,410, compared to £2,200 at Cardiff 's Millennium Stadium
  • Ministers agreed to give all profits from future ticket sales to the Football Association without the security of a proper contract, though public funding accounts for a fifth of the project's finances

Much of the report's criticism relates to when former culture secretary Chris Smith and exsports minister Kate Hoey over-saw the project. Their time in charge coincided with dithering over the athletics track that threatened the entire project.

When Tessa Jowell took over from Mr Smith she ordered major changes, but was responsible for the final deal that handed profits wholesale to the FA.

The report claims profits at the new Wembley will be around £13.5 million a year, none of which will go back into the public coffers. It says Whitehall must learn lessons from Wembley when raising money for new sports infrastructure, particularly if London's 2012 Olympics bid succeeds.

Sport England closed the old stadium before clinching the deal to build a replacement. The ground's value plunged while talks continued for two years.

Early in the new century the project was in jeopardy and, with it, one of the largest single handouts of public cash ever given to a building project.

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