£300,000 cost of 2022 Games bid

BIRMINGHAM City Council spent £300,000 on its bid for the 2022 Commonwealth Games, it has been revealed.

But the total costs could have spiralled to more than £6 million if the council’s original plan to bid for the 2026 games had gone ahead.

In documents published in response to a Freedom of Information request from the Local Democracy Reporting Service, a feasibility study into Birmingham hosting the games shows that initial estimates of the cost of the bid were around £6.6 million.

This included £2.5 million towards human resources and £1.3 million towards travel, subsistence and lobbying.

However, when the South African city of Durban pulled out of hosting the 2022 games, Birmingham as a region was invited to submit a bid to the UK government, meaning the cost was significantly less than it would have been.

Speaking at a council briefing on the feasibility study, Steve Hollingworth, the Birmingham City Council service director who played a key part in the 2026 and 2022 bid processes, said that the cost was so much less as the government removed the need for ‘gloss’ on the bid, and asked for the facts behind it.

“2022 was a regional bid, as you’re aware, and the city council’s contribution was £300,000 in total,” he said.

“And that’s because we didn’t have to go around 71 regions and basically sell our bid.”

Adding to that, a spokesman for Birmingham City Council said: “You’ll see there that it was projected that we would have spent £1.3 million doing exactly what Steve just said for 2026.

“Given that that situation never arose, it meant that our actual figure came in at much, much lower.”