London 2012 Preparations – Great Progress

Keith Mills, deputy chairman of the London 2012 Organizing Committee, told BBC Radio Sunday that London’s preparations for the 2012 Games are well on track even if no venues have yet been started.

“We have made huge progress in the Olympic Park which is obviously the biggest part of the construction project”, said Mills.

“We have built four kilometres of tunnels for all the cabling which we need for the venues. There’s a lot of construction going on but it’s mainly underground.

“This year all the buttons will start being pressed, so it’s an exciting time. We have the most enormous project plan and we are absolutely on target.

“The planning permission we’ve been waiting for should come through at the end of this month and we now own 96 or 97 per cent of all the land that we need.

“The contracts for the five big venues should go out to tender this year”.

Reuters reports that last year Olympic Minister Tessa Jowell admitted the projected costs of building the Olympic Park in East London had risen by 900,000 pounds to 3.3 billion. The total cost of regenerating what is a neglected area of London is likely to be much higher, reports Reuters, with some estimates in excess of 10 billion pounds.

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