Council criticised over athletes' village losses

A councillor in Birmingham has called for those responsible for a failed Commonwealth Games legacy project to be named and shamed.

The athletes' village in Perry Barr was built by the city council to host competitors during the Games in 2022, but was never used.

The BBC reported in August that the flats would make a loss of about £320m to taxpayers and local councillor Morriam Jan said people needed "to be held to account".

Birmingham City Council has been approached for a response on Jan's comments, but previously said there were difficult lessons it needed to learn.

"Names should be mentioned and maybe positions should go," the Liberal Democrat councillor for Perry Barr said.

"I feel that they've failed us, and will continue to fail us. This was a big massive project where we should've had a golden decade, we could've had a legacy."

It comes as the local authority is due to discuss a report, which said "project governance, reporting and decision making was deeply flawed with major financial consequences for the council".

The development was delayed due to coronavirus, and athletes were housed in student accommodation instead, while the 968 apartments were left sitting empty after they were eventually completed in April 2023.

In August, the council agreed to sell 755 of the homes at the site to a private bidder.

However, a report to the council's property committee showed the amount received would be less than the council had spent on the project and debts of between £142m and £152m were expected to remain unpaid.

The report added: "The cost of repaying and servicing this debt over a 40-year period is expected to be £8m to £9m per annum (interest and repayment)".

It had previously been confirmed the remaining 213 homes at the site would be used as social housing by the council.

The latest report, which will be discussed in a cabinet meeting on 21 January, said the local authority should have sought to remove the requirement to build an athletes' village.

Building the village was part of the city's hosting contract.

It said its in-house legal team was not sufficiently resourced to provide appropriate specialist legal and commercial expertise required in negotiation and agreement of contracts.

It added that the council explored the possibility of delivering the project through the private sector, but this was dismissed due to a lack of commitment from the market, due to the extremely short timescale for the project.

"This should have suggested the project was unviable," it said.

The report concluded that the council should seek to better understand and mitigate the financial risks associated with large and complex projects and balance value for money with realisation of deliverable social economic and commercial viability outcomes.

Independent MP for Birmingham Perry Barr Ayoub Khan said there "needs to be an inquiry".

"This is an enormous black hole which the taxpayers will need to foot in addition to the services cuts that they have seen," he said.

"They deserve to know what decisions were made in a very transparent way and [the] people that were involved, if there's any negligence, then they should be held responsible."

Jan said: "Something like this should have been looked at, discussed at an open table.

"Decisions were made behind closed doors, which shouldn't have [been] done.

"We know we need more homes, family homes, in our city and it was exciting because we thought people can get an opportunity to get on to the housing ladder.

"I've had a look at the apartments and they're beautiful, but they're sitting there like a ghost town."

Birmingham City Council said the report laid out difficult lessons it needed to learn, and welcomed the views and recommendations from commissioners.

"Birmingham City Council is being transformed, and its governance processes are being strengthened to ensure that members get the best professional advice, ensuring that these mistakes are not repeated," it continued.

"We now have the senior leadership team in place to deliver this transformation and are committed to ensuring that Birmingham City Council becomes a financially sustainable, well-run council that delivers good services to citizens."

It added that the Perry Barr residential scheme would still deliver homes for the city, and its recent deal with Legal & General Affordable Homes would ensure double the number of affordable homes set out in the planning application would be provided.

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