A MULTI-MILLION-pound athletics track at the new Wembley stadium may never be used, MPs claimed today.
The all party Commons Public Accounts Committee accused Sport England of adding an athletics facility to the scheme to avoid having to repay £20m of lottery grant.
"Now the decision has been made, it is not clear that the new stadium will ever actually be used to stage a major athletics event," say the MPs, including Ruth Kelly (Bolton West) and George Osborne (Tatton).
Wembley received £120m in lottery funds when it was chosen for the national stadium in 1996. It was to be completed in 2002 at a cost of £320m.
Platform
But the committee said today that the project will not be ready for at least two years and will cost £757m.
Part of the delay was the decision to accommodate athletics using a steel platform. Sport England told the MPs it would take 17 weeks to convert the stadium to athletics. During this time it would not be available for football.
"We asked how often the stadium would be used for athletics. Sport England expected it would be used once or twice in the next 20 years," said the MPs.
Manchester originally bid to host for a national stadium. City council chief executive Howard Bernstein, who led the bid, called the Wembley project a "shambles".
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Sir Howard is right the Wembley project is a fiasco borne out of key London based decision makers not being able to see beyond London for 'national' facilities such as the stadium. London is too congested, too expensive and geographically remote for a large proportion of the population. Manchester proved it has more of an appetite and technical ability to build stadia and host major events events such as the Comm Games.
What a surprise!
The new National Stadium should have been built slap bang in the middle of England, but no it HAD to go to London again.
From a football point of view, the majority of FA Cup winners are actually from the North of the country and our supporters deserve a better deal.
I've spoken to people who have attended fixtures at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff and they say it beats going to London any day.
Why on earth should the rest of the country have to constantly subsidise London and the South East?