The cost of London's 2012 Olympic Park has rocketed - partly because of a £400 million bill for the firm hired to keep costs down, Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell has revealed.
London's council taxpayers, along with Lottery cash, are expected to meet the overspend, which Ms Jowell said is now £900 million.
The cost of the Olympic Park in Stratford, east London, now stands at £3.3 billion, up from £2.375 billion.
Before Ms Jowell's announcement to the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, it was estimated that the total cost of the Games had soared to more than £5 billion.
Ms Jowell told the committee: "An additional cost of £400 million, not included in the original bid, is in order to fund the delivery partner whose overriding responsibility is to ensure the costs of the Games are kept on budget and that the timescales are kept.
"We are investing £400 million to make sure this is done properly".
The delivery partner is the CLM consortia chosen in August in the hope they would avoid a Wembley-style fiasco.
The increase was blamed on the doubling in the price of steel and a decision to revise transport costs to take into account inflation in the run-up to 2012.
Ms Jowell's figures exclude the cost of regenerating the Lower Lea Valley around the Olympic Park, put at more than £1 billion, where 40,000 homes are to be built and the Treasury's demand for a 60% contingency fund in case of construction overruns.
Asked who would meet the extra £900 million cost, Ms Jowell said discussions were going on, but the earlier "memorandum of understanding" had been for overspends to be met by a mix of London's council taxpayers and lottery games.
