Finally a sensible decision in what has been a drawn-out, fraught affair concerning the future of the Olympic Stadium after the London 2012 Olympic Games.
On the surface, this latest decision by the Government to collapse the sale to West Ham, retain control of the stadium in public hands and offer it out to tender on a lease arrangement appears muddled, a backward step and a costly multi million pound exercise for the taxpayer.
It certainly cements a feeling that the Olympic Park Legacy Company has been a dithering quango. But it allows the Government its most needed commodity – time. Time to decide if an athletics track, combined with rock concerts and a football tenant or two actually works. Time to host the 2017 World Athletics Championships, if London fends off rivals Doha. Time that eliminates what had been the increasing financial demands of Tottenham Hotspur in order to drop their legal challenge and the noisy machinations of Leyton Orient.
And with that time, comes the Government's most precious need: control. They had been losing control of this entire issue – especially when the European Commission was dragged into the dispute (through an anonymous complaint about Newham Council providing funding to West Ham to secure the original deal).
Some £17 million in sweeteners to Tottenham, via the Mayor, are still on offer until midnight Oct 19 for the club to drop their judicial review – a moot point now. Tottenham have won few friends at the political level for their manoeuvring and the club is likely to find strong support for West Ham if it also decides to tender for the stadium lease.
As insiders have clearly pointed out: "West Ham are making all the right noises now".
The Government is looking to rent out the stadium, which will be reconfigured to 60,000 seats from the 80,000 it will have at Games time, to a football tenant, for around £2 million a year. That leaves about £3 million a year in operating costs for the taxpayer, possibly picked up by renting out to an entertainment provider in the summer.
But any such Government subsidies might work out to be a bargain in the long run. If the Government offers a short tenancy it means that the entire process and effectiveness of combining athletics, concerts, naming rights and football can be revisited down the track, beyond the post-Olympic Games golden aura – and reconsidered in more buoyant economic times.
In the meantime, the effectiveness and efficiencies of the OPLC will come under scrutiny for its waste of monies in this mess. The 14-strong board is led by chair Baroness Margaret Ford who had promised on her appointment: "It is cast in stone that we leave a Grand Prix athletics stadium. But what I have opened the book around is the other kind of value we can add to this stadium". That promise is looking shaky indeed.
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