Spyns has been busy booking Gordon Ramsay restaurants and finding the best suites in London for our 2012 clients. If you would like some information on our tours, email me at henry@london-olympiad.com or check out our website. www.london-olympiad.com
Target end date for construction of the £262m structure has already slipped from April to June this year
The £268m Aquatics centre, which has soared in cost from the £73m originally cited in London's bid book, will contain two 50-metre pools, a 25m diving pool and associated training facilities.
A new National Audit Office report into the 2012 Olympics has underlined the extent to which security costs have risen and warned that timing is "becoming tight" to hand over the aquatics centre to organisers.
But the fifth NAO report into preparations for the Games concludes that preparations are going well overall and that the Olympic Delivery Authority, the body charged with spending £8.1bn of public money constructing the Olympic venues, remains on course to deliver.
The ODA's recently appointed chief executive Dennis Hone has acknowledged that it faced a race against time to hand over the Zaha Hadid-designed aquatics centre to the organising committee by July.
The NAO reports that the target end date for construction of the £262m structure has already slipped from April to June this year "because the design and fabrication of the roof steel, which proved more complex and protracted than envisaged, has affected the rest of the project".
In response to earlier NAO calls to finalise the cost of venue security during Games-time, which was not separately accounted for in earlier versions of the budget, the overall cost has risen.
Although the NAO reports that the Home Office has predicted it will be able to deliver policing for £475m, rather than the £600m originally budgeted for, the £282m allocated to Locog to provide venue security from within the overall £9.3bn public sector funding package has pushed the overall cost £757m.
Although it acknowledges that risks have been reduced as the construction phase of the project nears completion, the NAO warns that the final cost remains "inherently uncertain". Of the original £2.75bn in contingency funding, £974m remains.
"As there can be no guarantee that the remaining contingency will be sufficient to cover further unknown risks to the Games, the GOE should have plans for how it will meet any requirement for extra funding which cannot be met from within the remaining contingency," said the NAO.
The report also calls on the government to carry out work to estimate the net benefits that will accrue to the UK that can directly be attributed to the Games, in order to help it measure progress towards delivering on legacy targets.
"Good progress is being made in the preparations for the 2012 London Games which will begin in 17 months. All construction and infrastructure projects are forecast to be completed on time, albeit in two cases with little room to spare before the deadline for handover to Locog, the Games organiser, and operational planning has improved," said Amyas Morse, head of the NAO.
"However, the final cost of the Games to the taxpayer is inherently uncertain and as the Games near there will be less flexibility to make savings in response to any unforeseen financial pressures."
Lord Coe, the Locog chairman, said he was confident that the 8.8m tickets for the Games due to go on sale on 15 March would sell out. This week, the schedule and pricing details were published for the first time.
Spyns is an active travel company based in Whistler, BC (Canada). For more information about Spyns and our package tours to the 2012 London Summer Olympic Games, including London Olympics hotels, London 2012 tickets, and summer games VIP access, please visit our websites http://www.london-olympiad.com/ http://www.london2012-tours.com/ and http://www.london-tours-2012.com/ or call us toll-free at 1.888.825.4720. www.spyns.com.
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