Who benefits from the Olympics?

Len Tingle
Editor, Politics Show Yorkshire & Lincolnshire

Ian Ball, project manager for a youth drop-in centre, explains how Lottery funding has ceased.

A Yorkshire expert on Government spending has condemned using the Lottery's billions on the Olympics.

Professor David Hillier says it is devastating the finances of groups providing vital community support.

Some in Yorkshire say they are close to closing because Lottery funding has dried up.

The National Lottery and the Government deny money for "good causes" is being diverted to London's 2012 Olympics.

Rocketing estimates

The National lottery pledged £1.5bn to the start-up costs of the 2012 Olympics as soon as London won the bid to stage the games in July 2005.

The cost of the 2012 Olympics has risen to £9bn

Half the cash from the existing "Big Lottery" and the rest from the launch of a new "Olympic Lottery" game.

At that time it was thought the total cost of the games to public finances would be just £2.3bn with London's council tax payers picking up what the Lottery was not providing.

Since then the estimates of the cost of building the Olympic facilities has rocketed to over £9 bn.

The Lottery has pledged another £675m in the form of a loan backed by the sale of land and facilities after the games have ended.

"Nothing for us"

Professor Hillier of the University of Leeds Business School is not the only one concerned by the lottery being used as a major funding source for the Olympics.

It has angered people running schemes to support some of the most vulnerable members of their local communities.

David Hillier says spending on the Olympic Games needs to be reduced.

In South Yorkshire the Hickleton Youth Drop in Centre run from the refurbished pit yard offices of what used to be the village pit says it is counting its future in weeks.

"We received tens of thousands of pounds from the National Lottery to set this place up and now we are told there is nothing for us," says Ian Ball the project manager.

"Through the summer we have been paying the bills by building a mobile crazy golf game which the youth club members have been running a various garden fetes and charity events."

In a statement the Department of Media Culture and Sport told the Politics Show that "good causes" other than the Olympics would receive £6 billion pounds in the five year run up to the 2012 event.

The statement added that: "The London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games is exactly the sort of good cause the Lottery was designed to fund."

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