OPENING my Financial Times yesterday, I saw a full-page advert from the accountants KPMG: “Helping you succeed in turbulent times.” How very appropriate!
For it is KPMG who are doing their level best to help the London Olympic organisers succeed in ramming through their deeply risky proposal to hold the 2012 equestrian events in Greenwich Park – a plan which has certainly caused an awful lot of turbulence locally.
In August, KPMG were appointed to review Greenwich, and another local venue, the proposed Olympic shooting ground at Woolwich Barracks, amid growing concern that they would cost a fortune, provide no legacy, and would, in Greenwich’s case, risk terrible damage to our precious World Heritage Site park.
I have to confess that I was cynical at the time, privately believing the review to be no more than an attempt to validate decisions already taken. But I didn’t say so. I thought I’d give KPMG a chance and see whether they produced a serious piece of work that genuinely tried to review the issues, genuinely investigated the costs and benefits of moving the venues and genuinely approached the subject with an open mind.
Yesterday, my paper, the Standard, published extracts from a leaked email written by the Mayor, Boris Johnson, which summarised the KPMG review’s conclusions – and made quite clear that everyone’s worst fears about the study were true. This is indeed, it seems, one of those exercises where they decide the answer before they even start – and then work out how they’re going to justify it.
At least from the summary of the conclusions in that leaked email, the justification is so tortuous, the liberties taken with the truth so great, as to render this report one of the more intellectually suspect pieces of work I’ve seen (and I did read the Hutton Inquiry.)
KPMG’s key reason, in Boris’s words, for rejecting alternative venues (Windsor Great Park or Badminton, say), was that “Greenwich would be the cheapest option because any out-of-London venue would require provision of a satellite village for competitors.”
In fact, the 2012 Games already have eight out-of-London venues, in five sports – and none of them is being given a purpose-built satellite village. They’re using existing buildings (such as, you know, hotels, and student halls of residence) – and instead of paying through the nose to build an entire Olympic village from scratch, they’re just paying two weeks’ rent to the owners of said hotels and halls.
It would thus actually save vast amounts of taxpayers’ money to move the shooters and riders outside London, because we wouldn’t need to build the Olympic village as big.
But as I discovered, KPMG rejected Badminton and Windsor as too expensive and generally unsuitable without even visiting them, or indeed even (as both venues confirmed to me) talking to them.
That wasn’t the only thing they didn’t do. They didn’t talk to anyone in Greenwich or Woolwich, including the council, the local amenity groups, or Michael Goldman’s NOGOE, which opposes the use of the park. They didn’t talk to any of the three national sporting federations whose sports will take place in Greenwich and Woolwich. They didn’t speak to the landowner, the Royal Parks.
Most of all, they didn’t make any kind of examination of the environmental and ecological impact of the proposals – in other words, they completely ignored the main grounds on which so many are objecting to the use of the park!
What work did KPMG actually do, then? Ah, that’s a little more difficult. Even their full terms of reference are not public for reasons of “commercial confidentiality.” And the cost figures they used? Alas, these too have to remain secret, said the Olympics Minister, Tessa Jowell, this week, for the same reason.
Other questionable claims in the KPMG conclusions are that security and transport at alternative venues will cost more. But both Greenwich and any out-of-London alternative would be stand-alone, outside the general ring of security on the Olympic Park, and thus security requirements would be similar.
Greenwich Park does have railings around it, but temporary security fencing is also likely to be required by the IOC, as it was at the 2008 Olympics in Hong Kong. On this basis, fencing a venue in the middle of the countryside would certainly cost no more than fencing Greenwich Park, and probably less, since access for construction will be easier.
The need for guards and patrols will also be greater for a venue in the middle of a heavily-populated inner city area with a high crime rate. Satellite stabling areas outside the park will also need to be secured, whereas at, say, Windsor all the stabling could be together.
Securing Woolwich, which is in the middle of a public common and is partly open on one side, will be vastly more expensive than securing the proposed alternative, Bisley – which because of its year-round role as a shooting centre is already one of the country’s most secure sporting venues. The existing security fence at Bisley was deemed perfectly adequate for the Commonwealth Games.
KPMG also claimed that transport costs would be greater for any alternative venues. Again, probably untrue, depending on the alternative venue and the distance from it to the athletes’ accommodation.
If the equestrianism was held at Windsor Great Park, and the shooting at Bisley, the accommodation would be at Royal Holloway College at Egham (where the Olympic rowers are already scheduled to go, and there is ample space for shooters and riders). From the Great Park to Egham is about half the distance from Greenwich to the Olympic Village, and on far less congested roads. From Bisley to Egham is only slightly further than from Woolwich to Stratford.
Finally, KPMG said that Greenwich would have to stay because there would still need to be a modern pentathlon showjumping arena constructed in London. This is true, but a red herring. The riding part of the modern pentathlon does need to be in London to be near the other four sports which make up the event. But a pentathlon riding arena is far simpler and cheaper than an equestrian one, reflecting the fact that the entire horse part of the pentathlon takes just three hours over the whole Games (90 minutes each for men and women.)
Next year’s modern pentathlon World Championships – a “class A” event equivalent to the Olympics – are being held in the athletics stadium at Crystal Palace at a total cost to the taxpayer (for all five events, not just the riding) of £660,000.
Part of me feels depressed at the shamelessness of KPMG’s claims – and not least at the fact that, according to the leaked email, they do seem to have convinced Boris to drop his pressure for changing the venues. The Mayor also seems to have been convinced from the experience of this year’s Olympic horse events in Hong Kong that there would be little damage to the park. But the Olympic cross-country venue was a private golf course, quite different from the densely-packed, historic and public place that is Greenwich Park.
No doubt this will lead to a further round of claims by Olympic spinners that Greenwich Park is a “done deal” and it is time for everyone to fall into line. But another part of me feels encouraged. It shows the true case for Greenwich is so weak that they can only make it by making it up. If Locog expect this report to settle any arguments, they will, I fear, be disappointed.
Click here for the full text of the leaked email.
Suspect? Because you don’t agree with them? Awful lot of guess work on your behalf about fencing costs etc ect
You mention satellite stabling – but I thought that for reasons of quarantine, protection against doping, etc, once the horses are on site they have to stay there. Similarly the grooms will need to stay with them all the time, and the equestrians won’t want to be too far away (across the river, through the Blackwall Tunnel, etc, etc – that estimate of half an hour is wildly optimistic to those of us who have tried to struggle through it.) Surely the horses aren’t going to be transported through the tunnel or via DLR or Jubilee Line? And where are they going to exercise? There won’t be much room left in the Park by the time everything else has been put in. Certainly not enough room for enough spectators to raise any significant revenue.
It’s interesting that it will take the National Maritime Museum three years to build a whole new wing, yet LOCOG have been unable to produce a proper Environmental Impact Survey three years after winning the bid. I’m equally astounded that no environmental experts have offered an opinion on the likely damage to Greenwich Park.
So we’re left with the only assurance from LOCOG that no damage was done in Hong Kong. It’s incredible that Boris (in the leaked email) was taken in by this spurious comparison between a golf course and a World Heritage Site. Millions were spent in HK over 2 years to grow grass that was hoof-resistant. And I don’t think there was the potential to do damage to trees, acid grasses and wildlife. I hope the public won’t be as naive, and challenge LOCOG on this issue at consultations.