Lend Lease to net £30m in Olympic Village fees

Olympic Village developer Lend Lease could earn £30m in fees even if it fails to put another penny into the project.

Subsidiary Bovis Lend Lease is construction manager on the £1bn scheme and CJ understands it will pull in a fee of around 3% of the project value for its management role.

The firm will ultimately get more of a fee the less it pumps into the project in equity funding. The firm was originally going to finance half the scheme but has been struggling to raise funds.

Lend Lease is guaranteed its construction management role irrespective of the level of funding it eventually pumps in.

One Olympic expert said: "Lend Lease is in a no-lose situation: it will get a fee whatever happens with the funding."

An Olympic source explained: "If Lend Lease puts up half the money for the project it will effectively be paying itself to construction manage it so the fee will be higher, the less the amount of cash it puts in."

The Olympic village received an extra £231m injection of public cash last week on top of the £95m pledged last year to get construction started.

Around 600 workers are currently on the site which will house more than 50 accommodation blocks for athletes.

The Olympic contingency fund has also been raided for a further £135m to make up a private funding shortfall for the media centre.

The Government is still confident Lend Lease can come up with some cash for the village and Olympic Minister Tessa Jowell said a deal would be finalised by the spring.

An ODA spokesperson said: "These figures are highly speculative." The spokesperson declined to comment further due to commercial sensitivity.