The Athletes’ Village in Perry Barr Birmingham was given planning permission in December 2018. Despite this, it never housed an athlete for the Commonwealth Games. The development cost Labour- run Birmingham City Council some £500 Million in construction, and will now cost an additional estimated £311 million in interest – bringing the cost of the site to an eye watering £811 Million. This equates to a loss of roughly £473,000 per unit despite average house prices rising 24% during the construction period.
In many ways, the Athletes’ Village is symbolic of the wasted legacy of Birmingham's Commonwealth Games, as something that could have had a long term benefit to the City, but will instead end up costing residents million of pounds for years to come. The latest figure includes £17.2 million a year for 40 years of repayments on the village. This will effectively cost every household in the City £2000 a year.
Cllr Robert Alden (Con, Erdington), Leader of the opposition and Birmingham Local Conservatives said
Birmingham Labour’s botched Athletes’ Village is one of the worst financial disasters in Local Government history. The Council promised it would be built on time and on budget but ended up not being finished at all, over budget, costing £850m eventually to local taxpayers, and is now being sold at a huge loss.
With what little money that is recouped being diverted to pay for their failures over equal pay, bankrupt Birmingham City Council are left paying £17.2 million a year in additional debt repayments for 40 years!
An urgent enquiry is now needed to discover why the Labour Administration ignored all the warnings they would fail before a brick had been laid.
