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Olympic Stadium; our day in court

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  • Prague you obviously know the contract inside out. Are the LDDC obliged to return the retractable seats at their cost or can they refuse to do so unless WH pay to do so?

    That's an interesting question. I can't pretend to know the thing inside out, it is 200 pages. However nowhere do I recall that the contract stipulates a minimum capacity related to WHU rental. On the other hand neither does it say that WHU must pay for cost of seats which are retracted. When the thing was written by all those bigshots, they all apparently understood that the cost of the retracting seats was about £300,000 a go. If the LLDC said, "actually it is £8m and you lot should pay" the Baroness would be putting in yet another call to their lawyers. She does that a lot. The LLDC are not the bravest at the best of times (apparently Goldstone is leaving at the end of the year) so you could not expect them to take that stance.

  • Quizzing of people by the London assembly about the costs today just got a mention on ITV local news - didn’t catch the full bit
  • That was an interesting and useful session.

    Gareth Bacon surprised me. He has ignored our email which presented him with E20s dismal P&L projections. However he was obviously referring to it when he talked about figures "being bandied about". Goldstone basically confirmed them, and now it's all on the record. No naming rights fees, and a horrendous cost ( more than our own model allowed for) of seating removal. If I was being generous to Bacon I would say that was quite a subtle way of satisfying himself that we had not plucked the figures out of thin air. It will be interesting to see if he now replies to us.

    I will post more thoughts later, and would be interested to get the takeout of others who view the proceedings.
  • I only saw the summary on the BBC news at 1.20ish. My impression was they are saying it will make money in the long run (?), they said it costs £8m to move the seats but they are going to halve that (how ?), and there was a claim that it’s been the most successful one (if the Olympics) - didn’t explain what, how on the news summary.
  • I only saw the summary on the BBC news at 1.20ish. My impression was they are saying it will make money in the long run (?), they said it costs £8m to move the seats but they are going to halve that (how ?), and there was a claim that it’s been the most successful one (if the Olympics) - didn’t explain what, how on the news summary.

    Well it appears that they are exploring some way of moving different parts of the seating areas rather than moving the whole lot in every stand, but at the same time they are also looking at ways to reduce the £4m figure even further. It's not abundantly clear from even watching the meeting in progress.
  • That was an interesting and useful session.

    Gareth Bacon surprised me. He has ignored our email which presented him with E20s dismal P&L projections. However he was obviously referring to it when he talked about figures "being bandied about". Goldstone basically confirmed them, and now it's all on the record. No naming rights fees, and a horrendous cost ( more than our own model allowed for) of seating removal. If I was being generous to Bacon I would say that was quite a subtle way of satisfying himself that we had not plucked the figures out of thin air. It will be interesting to see if he now replies to us.

    I will post more thoughts later, and would be interested to get the takeout of others who view the proceedings.

    To me Gareth Bacon definitely seemed to asking questions to confirm information that he had already received. He didn't seem very surprised with the answers he received and certainly didn't push his points too vigorously.
  • Yes he did, shown asking questions and in a short interview afterwards.
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  • I am not liking that post, although no criticism of the poster intended.

    This is another highly suspicious move by Gareth Bacon. The Inquiry is due to publish in a few days, and doubtless will have seen the accounts he is calling for, so what does he hope to gain?. Anyway, the 2016-17 accounts only show what happened last year, whereas the figures we sent him model the situation up to 2026. And he knows the figures are robust, because he obliquely asked Goldstone about them at the last plenary, and received verification. Yet he has not responded to us.

    So what's his game. Any thoughts? I have various possibilities in my head, none of them good. But above all I have in mind that he is one of Johnson's faithful lapdogs.

    I was very keen to go after Bacon in public over this, but more politically experienced colleagues held me back. We are at the GLA on 8th December meeting at minimum Caroline Pidgeon, so we might learn more by operating under the radar.
  • I love this line...

    "The assembly needs to do its job of scrutinising the issues that matter to London, unhindered.”

    A shame that Mr Bacon and his mate Boris weren't so conscientious in their scrutinising of the WHam deal!! That's an issue that really matters to all of us.

    The accounts are due to be with Companies House by 1 January, so I would assume that Moore Stephens will have seen them, even if not yet signed off by EY (if they're still auditor), as part of their investigation.
  • edited November 2017
    TelMc32 said:

    I love this line...

    "The assembly needs to do its job of scrutinising the issues that matter to London, unhindered.”

    A shame that Mr Bacon and his mate Boris weren't so conscientious in their scrutinising of the WHam deal!! That's an issue that really matters to all of us.

    The accounts are due to be with Companies House by 1 January, so I would assume that Moore Stephens will have seen them, even if not yet signed off by EY (if they're still auditor), as part of their investigation.

    I'm guessing that they'd like to be seeing more than the minimalist, bare bones statutory accounts that end up with The Registrar of Companies. The full, unexpurgated management accounts in all their glory would seem apposite.
  • cafcfan said:

    TelMc32 said:

    I love this line...

    "The assembly needs to do its job of scrutinising the issues that matter to London, unhindered.”

    A shame that Mr Bacon and his mate Boris weren't so conscientious in their scrutinising of the WHam deal!! That's an issue that really matters to all of us.

    The accounts are due to be with Companies House by 1 January, so I would assume that Moore Stephens will have seen them, even if not yet signed off by EY (if they're still auditor), as part of their investigation.

    I'm guessing that they'd like to be seeing more than the minimalist, bare bones statutory accounts that end up with The Registrar of Companies. The full, unexpurgated management accounts in all their glory would seem apposite.
    Agreed. And as the LLDC is a mayoral body, I can't see how they don't have them presented to them every month anyway.
  • TelMc32 said:

    cafcfan said:

    TelMc32 said:

    I love this line...

    "The assembly needs to do its job of scrutinising the issues that matter to London, unhindered.”

    A shame that Mr Bacon and his mate Boris weren't so conscientious in their scrutinising of the WHam deal!! That's an issue that really matters to all of us.

    The accounts are due to be with Companies House by 1 January, so I would assume that Moore Stephens will have seen them, even if not yet signed off by EY (if they're still auditor), as part of their investigation.

    I'm guessing that they'd like to be seeing more than the minimalist, bare bones statutory accounts that end up with The Registrar of Companies. The full, unexpurgated management accounts in all their glory would seem apposite.
    Agreed. And as the LLDC is a mayoral body, I can't see how they don't have them presented to them every month anyway.
    Exactly. Mayoral body and 65% shareholder in E20.

    Kevin Rye thinks Bacon is just trying to look as he is in charge of the scrutiny, but I am afraid it's a bit more than that. We have now written to Andrew Boff, the Tory who has regularly spoken out about the deal and supposedly is not a Boris fanboy. If he doesn't respond then we may conclude that the Tories are more concerned with attacking Khan than with safeguarding taxpayers' money.

    Gareth Bacon " represents" Bexleyheath, BTW, on the Assembly..

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  • So the next step is to rip up the current deal and line up a new contract, one which has Wet Spam paying their way?
  • and the work to convince UKA to move out for good is ongoing, hence UKA bidding for any athletics event that could use the stadium at the moment.
  • The stadium was originally built with a 25k permanent seating deck, and 55k of temporary seating above, which was to be removed after the Olympics, leaving a 25k athletics track

    Because of this, the lower deck isn't movable seating, and instead we have this fudge where a new seating deck is installed in from of the existing lower deck seating to bring it forward over the running track. This was done for the 2015 Rugby WC, and I distinctly remember at the time that this was a temporary fix, and that a different solution would be used for West Ham a year later...except that by all accounts, a similar solution is being used which is very expensive and takes ages to install.

    And the taxpayer paid for all of this.


  • Well, you can imagine that "ripping up" a deal signed by Baronness Brady is not for the faint-hearted. However we do have a "workaround", which we will be presenting at City Hall next week...

    Instead of offering a workaround, surely you mean asking West ham to offer a reacharound?

    And State Aid....really? how many times is that one going to tried?
  • gavros said:



    Well, you can imagine that "ripping up" a deal signed by Baronness Brady is not for the faint-hearted. However we do have a "workaround", which we will be presenting at City Hall next week...

    Instead of offering a workaround, surely you mean asking West ham to offer a reacharound?

    And State Aid....really? how many times is that one going to tried?
    Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
  • West Ham say that the original contract is water tight. This will drag on through the courts for years.
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