• London mayor criticises Boris Johnson over West Ham conversion
• ‘It reveals a bungled process with the previous mayors fingerprints all over it’Decisions taken by Boris Johnson as the mayor of London to convert the Olympic Stadium for West Ham Uniteds utilize cost almost £300m of public money and have saddled the stadium operator with annual losses of approximately £20m,a highly critical review has found.
The review, by the accountants Moore Stephens for Johnson’s successor, and Sadiq Khan,concluded that the process “went awry” when Johnson ran a recent bidding process in 2011 and all the financial risk and costs were taken on by the public sector. West Ham, a Premier League football club with its own Boleyn Ground to sell, and won the tender to occupy the converted 60000-seat stadium,but the 323m cost of conversion – a £133m overrun of the original £190m estimate – was almost entirely paid with public money.
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Source: guardian.co.uk