Olympic media centre ‘up to £90m over budget’

The Olympic Delivery Authority is to revise plans for the £400m Olympic media centre after it emerged that the original design could run up to £90m over budget.

The value-engineering exercise could mean that parts of the building, which is to hold 20,000 journalists, become temporary structures.

In addition, sources said the funding shortfall for the Olympic village – which the public purse will have to meet – is in the region of £400m.

The media centre is the latest venue to hit budget problems. Cost overruns have already occurred at the Olympic stadium and Zaha Hadid’s aquatics centre, which will cost £303m rather than £77m.

A source close to the media centre said contractor Carillion, regeneration developer Igloo and the ODA were involved in “intensive technical work to value-engineer the cost of the building”. The source added: “If it were built as envisaged, it could be about £80-90m over.”

Parts of the building, including internal broadcast studio pods and the roof, were always intended to be temporary, but the changes are likely to extend this to other parts of the building.

It has always been the intention that there would be some temporary elements

Spokesperson, ODA

The source added that all parties were determined to get the cost within budget.

The Olympic village has already had its number of homes cut from 4,200 to about 3,000 to keep costs within budget.

It is understood that Lend Lease, which was to have developed the village but has been struggling to secure funding, is to be engaged as project manager under an interim funding arrangement. The intention is that it will buy back a stake before the end of the year.

David Higgins, chief executive of the ODA, said this week that it would be “a number of weeks” before an interim agreement was reached; this was expected to have happened at the start of August. He said it would be “highly unlikely” that Lend Lease would not take an equity stake once funding had been arranged.

A spokesperson for the ODA on the media centre said: “This is speculation. We’re going through standard design processes on the media centre as we have with all venues. It has always been the intention that there would be some temporary elements and the exact nature of this is currently being finalised.”

The ODA declined to confirm the £400m shortfall on the village.