Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has ordered an investigation into the finances of the former Olympic Stadium after learning that the cost of transforming the facility into a suitable venue for English Premier League football club West Ham United has risen by £51m (€56.5m/$62.2m).
The cost of renovating the venue, which is now officially known as London Stadium, was initially set at £272m but that figure has increased to £323m.
UK broadcaster Sky News said the cost of moving so-called retractable seating played a part in the increased outlay. The seats, which increased in cost from an estimated £300,000 to £8m, were fitted in a bid to improve the view for football fans.
It had originally been forecast that the seats would take five days to remove at the end of the football season, and five days to fit again at the start of the next campaign. However engineers now predict it could take 15 days each to remove and reinstall the seats.
This would present a problem for stadium operators and West Ham. The stadium is due to stage the 2017 IAAF World Athletics and World ParaAthletics Championships next summer, as well as music concerts, while West Ham could end up starting the 2017-18 campaign with a string of away fixtures to allow time for the seats to be reinstalled.
Deputy Mayor Jules Pipe told Sky News: “Last year the previous administration told the public that the costs had risen in total to around £270m. The new Mayor has now been told that cost will be over £320m. Understandably, Sadiq has ordered an investigation as to why those two figures are so wildly different.
"As the new administration at City Hall clearing up the mess of the previous administration, we need to make sure that the stadium runs on a sustainable basis and it is affordable to London."
The total cost of the stadium now stands at £752m, all of which has been paid for by the taxpayer, with the exception of a £15m contribution from West Ham. The club is paying £2.5m per season to rent out London Stadium, which has been beset by problems of crowd trouble during the opening months of the season as its suitability as a football ground is called into question.
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