Olympics 2012 - Costings?

After visiting the olympics earlier this week something that really interested me was the cost the olympics has brought to England and how eco friendly it has been this year for Great Britain. I have now decided to research the cost of the olympics, looking at how this has increased in recently years with increased expectations and increased tourism that the olympics brings to it's hosting city.

What comes with cost is recycling and the effect that the olympics has on the environment and surrounding area's of the hosting city. I will also be looking into this and researching further as I found certain facts around the olympic park really interesting as the eco friendly aspect was reflected through recycling bins and facts were printed onto signs and spray painted onto the floor as well. 

Research I collected from the Guardian:


London Olympic 2012: Where does the money come from - and where is it being spent?

Think you know how much London 2012's Olympic games will cost? Think again. The £9bn figure that we have seen, is just the largest part of a complicated set of arrangements involving public and private finance.

We thought it would be a good idea to gather all that data together in one place - to provide a definitive guide to this Olympic's funding.

We've pulled together data published by the Olympic Delivery Authority(ODA), the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) - and what we know of the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (Locog) to piece together a detailed picture of funding and spending.

The difference between Locog and the ODA is, as a Locog spokeswoman put it to me: "the ODA is building the theatre; we put on the show". The ODA has spent £6.248bn of public money on getting the grounds and venues ready, with another £2.537bn coming spent via other bodies such as local authorities and direct from the DCMS itself. Locog has budgeted the smallest amount: £2bn.

So, how did we get here? We have identified spending of around £11bn - which is essentially the government's £9bn plus Locog's published budget of £2bn. Locog will not publish any details until after the games themselves, so we have divided up its funding using what we know, which is that Locog is paying for half the budget for ceremonies, half the budget for the paralympics and, obviously, the cost of running the events themselves.

Most of the data on public spending comes via the ODA annual report and this document from the DCMS, which breaks down spending by venue and funding.

These are some of the key numbers:

• The single biggest item of spending has been preparing the Olympic park: at £1.822bn, it includes the local infrastructure, roads, cleaning up the site and powerlines
• That's followed by the venues, which cost £1.106bn, and the most expensive is the Olympic stadium at £428m
• The cheapest venue is the basketball arena at only £4m
• While security is budgeted at £533m - there's another £475m budgeted to cover army, security services and police spending (that includes surface to air missiles on tower blocks)
• Legacy specific funding - ie the money for making sure the park has a future once the games are over - is £296m for 'park transformation', to be spent by the London Legacy Development Corporation

There's lots more in the data - and there's always the chance that there's more we don't know about. If you do, or have some more information - mail us at data@guardian.co.uk.

And how much is £11bn? It's equivalent to what the Home Office - which funds police and security in the UK, spent in 2010-11.