LDA projects face £45m cutbacks
As a result of the massive £160m hole in the LDA budget the LDA has announced “Savage cuts” in its programme budgets for this and next financial year. How this will affect business support services is unclear but one well connected member has heard that the Business London contract will be cut by a further 25% next year.
The London Development Agency is being forced to make £45 million of cutbacks in the current financial year to cover the a £160 million spending over-spend that has been found by its auditors KPMG.
The London Development Agency’s (LDA) over-spend is apparently the result of the body’s failure to make provision for payments to some landowners who had been relocated to make way for the Olympic Park development in east London.
If the news this year is bad then it is worse for next year for it was announced on Monday that the agency would have to find £107 million in 2009/10 to meet the additional costs, with the rest of the money coming from future financial years.
The LDA said that, in 2009/10, the cost of the over commitment would be partly offset by deferring a payment of £30 million to the Olympic Delivery Authority and through land receipts.
However, the remainder would be met through “programme spend reductions of £45 million”.
The LDA said that £24 million of that amount would come from funding that had been earmarked for, but not communicated to, possible beneficiaries. But he added that £21 million would be taken from current programmes.
LDA chief executive Sir Peter Rogers told the committee that the budget of tourism body Visit London would be slashed by £4 million to £13 million.
Rogers added that compulsory purchase order payments around Wembley would be delayed and that the budget of an Olympic construction skills training programme would be cut by £600,000.
To find out more you will have to go to the Regeneration News website.
