Huge athletes’ villages is risk to finances of city council
COMPLETING the Commonwealth Games athletes’ village in time for Birmingham 2022 poses “a real risk to the finances of the city”, a council committee has been warned.
Cllr Paul Tilsley raised concerns about runaway costs and the risk of not being able to sell property at the Perry Barr village due to the Covid economic crisis.
In March it was reported that the village was set to cost £92 million more than the £496 million originally budgeted.
The council pledged at the time to reduce this figure by £25 million for the scheme, which is intended to host 6,500 athletes during the competition and provide 1,400 homes afterwards.
Construction work on the village began in May last year and is due to be completed in early 2022. In documents to the audit committee, the village was identified as one of seven “top operational risks” to the council – namely in terms of slippage and cost overruns.
Speaking at this week’s audit committee meeting, Cllr Tilsley (Lib Dem) said: “I have no doubt that we can meet the deadlines, but the only way to meet deadlines for this is throwing money at it.
“As Government have put a cap on the amount of money that they are going to provide for the Commonwealth Games to the city, it will be at our risk.
“We are going to hopefully be selling the Commonwealth Games village off to private owners off-plan. “Now if the current economic situation remains, this is going to be real risk as far as we are concerned.
“You only have to turn the clock back to what happened with off-plan sales in Spain when the economic crisis hit and you go round Spain and still see the residual skeletons that remain.
“As far as I am concerned, it is a real risk to the finances of the city.”
Sarah Dunlavey, the city council’s assistant director for audit and risk management, said: “Commonwealth Games has its own risk register, and it is extensive.
“All of those risks will be picked up separately and will be managed in a cross-organisation structure.” Birmingham City Council has forecast its budget shortfall across 2020-21 and 2021-22 to be £212 million in the wake of the pandemic.