Auditors: London 2012 delivered value for money

The UK National Audit Office has released its report ‘The London 2012 Olympic Games and Paralympic Games: post-Games review’ on the legacy of the London Games and the report reveals a positive review with an unspent £377mio.

The National Audit Office (NAO), who has been following the expenditures of the London 2012 Games has released its last report, which concludes that the Games were ‘successful’.

"Few could have envisaged how successful the London 2012 Games would turn out to be. The construction programme was completed on time and within budget, 11 million tickets were sold and our athletes excelled. Crucially, the Games passed off without major transport disruption or security incident,” says Amyas Morse, head of NAO according to the press release.

The London organising committee (LOCOC) had a budgeted £9,3 billion in public funding and according to the estimations in the report, £377m will be left unused. The exact number will not be known before 2014 when all calculations can be done. The original cost assessment of hosting the Olympic summer games 2012 was £2,4 billion, a number which was more than tripled in 2007 landing the public funding package on £9,3 billion.

The surplus of the adjusted budget could have been higher, estimates the report, had the LOCOC not met obstacles on its way. For example, the organisers had to cover an unexpected £500m cost for venue security due to security company G4S failing to deliver the promised number of security persons. Other operational costs also turned out to be higher than initially estimated.

To ensure momentum of the Games, the NOA underlines the importance of the Cabinet Office taking a strong leadership coordinating the many organisations involved in different aspects of the legacy of the games.

Read an Executive Summary of the report

Read the full report