Birmingham to host 2022 Commonwealths
BIRMINGHAM will today be confirmed as the host city for the Commonwealth Games in 2022. The event was initially awarded to Durban in South Africa but financial difficulties saw the bidding process re-opened and with only Birmingham and Liverpool interested, the Midlands city was chosen for Government backing in September. The three-month hold-up in awarding the Games to England’s second city came after the bid was at first deemed ‘not fully compliant’. However, the Commonwealth Games Federation are now satisfied with the Government support for the bid, which will be 75 per cent of the estimated £750million budget for staging the event. It will also be the most expensive sports event in Britain since the London 2012 Olympics. Birmingham is already planning to build Britain’s largest permanent athletics stadium along with four indoor arenas. Birmingham 2022 will be the third time Britain has staged the Games since 2002, when Manchester held it, followed by Glasgow in 2014. Once Durban’s hosting plans fell into disarray and the city was stripped in March, bids were expected from Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur and Victoria in Canada, but neither materialised. A sticking point with the Birmingham bid was whether the city would be able to stump up its share of the budget to go with the Government funding. Recent local issues have included disputes with female council workers and a five-month row with refuse collectors that left piles of rubbish on the city’s streets. The doubts about how the local authorities will cope with paying 25 per cent of the Games bill have not gone away but organisers say local services will not be affected by their plans. These include building an athletes’ village in the northern suburb of Perry Barr and subsequent plans for the area to be revitalised in much the same way as east Manchester in 2002. Birmingham will today be formally announced as hosts at a press conference in the city.