150. Our principal conclusions and recommendations
are as follows:
| (i) | We cannot understand why the BOA, which has no financial stake whatever in this costly project, should have been allowed so decisive a voice in the progress or lack of progress of the Wembley National Stadium project. Furthermore, taking into account the readiness of the BOA to involve itself in the project when the BOA had made no commitment to Wembley as the centre for staging of the Olympic Games in London, we would have expected the BOA to have focused its own objectives more sharply. Even now, we have no idea whether the BOA wants to make a bid for an Olympiad to be held in Britain and, if so, for which year. The BOA has exercised an influence on the Wembley National Stadium which has not been justified, an influence exercised ironically to the detriment of athletics (paragraph 26).
|
| |
|
| (ii) | The omission of the BOA and UK Athletics from the National Stadium Monitoring Committee was a fundamental failure which undermined the effectiveness of the Government's approach to the Wembley National Stadium project (paragraph 38).
|
| |
|
| (iii) | Insofar as non-design factors played a part in the Secretary of State's decision of 22 December, they are problems which should have been apparent to Ministers since May 1999. In particular, it would have been possible for the Government to resolve the confusion about the warm-up track at a much earlier stage and it should have done so. Solutions to these non-design problems were and remain primarily a responsibility of Ministers (paragraph 47).
|
| |
|
| (iv) | It was quite legitimate to question the viability of the platform solution, but there is no justification for viewing it as a concept which emerged late in the design process and was not integral to it. While there may have been differing views about its desirability or feasibility, there is no doubt that the platform solution had been available for consideration from any early date (paragraph 58).
|
| |
|
| (v) | We believe that the platform solution proposed by the Wembley design team is a commendable and innovative solution to the requirements of the design brief and could well provide a template for future projects (paragraph 70).
|
| |
|
| (vi) | Had the opportunity for an earlier meeting with concerned bodies been taken, then the Secretary of State would have been able to avail himself of more considered views from these bodies before drafting his statement to the House of Commons (paragraph 82).
|
| |
|
| (vii) | If WNSL's contentions are correct, the sight-line characteristics of the new Wembley Stadium in athletics mode with 80,000 seats are broadly comparable with the Stadium which last staged track and field events during the Olympics in Europe, with the Stadium which will next stage track and field athletics in the Olympics in Europe and with the Stadium which is expected to be central to the current Paris bid for the Olympics. Wembley Stadium does not meet standards established in design briefs for stadia to be built initially for the Olympics in 1996 and 2000 and thereafter to be subject to extensive modification to facilitate their long-term viability (paragraph 102).
|
| |
|
| (viii) | Stadium design is now a technical process and we consider the evidence provided by WNSL to be satisfactory. The BOA's non-technical views seem to have had a disproportionate influence in the Secretary of State's decision-making (paragraph 109).
|
| |
|
| (ix) | We have not discovered any rationale for why the sum for the proposed payment should be £20 million rather than more or less. It seems to be an arbitrary figure plucked out of the air (paragraph 113).
|
| |
|
| (x) | Invited to comment on speculation that the proposed payment of £20 million from the FA had been forthcoming in order to ward off a football regulator, the Secretary of State said that "the proposals about the regulation of football which are made in the Task Force report will be examined purely on their own merits, with no other considerations in mind". We would expect no less (paragraph 114).
|
| |
|
| (xi) | We recommend that the final bid submitted to the IAAF for the 2005 World Athletics Championships be based at Wembley National Stadium. We further recommend that, should this bid be successful, the Stadium be built initially with the athletics platform in place and with a capacity of 80,000 (paragraph 139).
|
| |
|
| (xii) | Should the case for a national athletics stadium be established in the future and should it require significant public funding, we recommend that there should be a presumption that the stadium will not be located in London (paragraph 141).
|
| |
|
| (xiii) | We repeat our recommendation of May 1999 that the Prime Minister designate one of the present Ministers in the Cabinet Office as Minister for Events and assign to that Minister direct responsibility for a Government strategy on major events of international status. The case for early implementation of this recommendation has become all the stronger since May 1999 (paragraph 145).
|
| |
|
| (xiv) | We recommend that the Minister for Events publish a consultation paper on a British Olympic bid in the autumn of this year with a view to the Government reaching a decision in principle on whether or not to support any bid for the 2012 Olympic Games soon after the venue for the 2008 Games is determined (paragraph 149).
|
