Andrew Dismore

Olympic Park Legacy

Question No: 2550 / 2012

Andrew Dismore

Will you ensure that Londoners, who in large part paid for the Olympic and Paralympic Games 2012, will be allowed access to venues inside the Olympic Park – the Stadium, the Velodrome, the Swimming Pool – before they are closed to the public and/or reduced in size?

Written response from the Mayor

I have examined every conceivable option in an attempt to keep the Park open after the Games but it wasn’t possible.  The vital work of transforming the Park is already under way. Any delay would have meant that contracts could not be honoured, money would have been lost, and the timetable for Park re-opening would have been pushed back considerably.

 

I do appreciate that people would like to see the Park after the interest it has generated from the Games and that is why, together with the Legacy Corporation, I recently ran a competition called A Day on the Park to give 10,000 Paralympics tickets to Londoners to give them the opportunity to visit the Park before it closes.

When the venues re-open, under our price pledge, it will cost Londoners the same price to swim in the Aquatics Centre and use the Copperbox facilities as a leisure centre in the boroughs around the Park.