The Effects Of The London 2012 Olympics

The Olympic bid promised to have the most effect on East London. Why? In Stratford a positive legacy is left behind. This is due to sporting facilities becoming open to the public, and the 3000 athletes housing in the Olympic Village becoming social housing, which surely should provide motivation to the people of Stratford to strive to achieve like the people who were in their housing did. In addition to this, London Development Agency set out detailed plans for regeneration of Stratford and Hackney Wick , which involves a 30 year development programme after 2012 involving the construction of 10,000 new homes. But in terms of businesses in East London there seemed to be a feeling that the Olympics would have no effects whatsoever, especially one Car business who pointed out that people from abroad are not coming to buy new cars . Also the majoring of people are travelling on the underground, and even with a predicted 20 million additional journeys to the 3.5 million daily journeys during 2012, these are mainly tourists travelling to hotspots such as Canary Wharf, West End, King Cross and the Olympics, therefore going straight past East London , this explains why the people of East London feel that little, if any economic impact would be created. But positive effects of the Olympics will be felt in the long run as regeneration of East London has created 3,000 jobs and added £70m to economic growth as well as £280-507m from tourism. In addition to this, the area of East London will also benefit from future use of sporting facilities, cultural diversity and promotion of sports among younger people. The 30 year development programme after 2012 will provide economic benefits to East London, particularly Stratford and Hackney Wick , as employment is created through this in - finance, admin, building, and maintenance throughout the process of creating 10,000 new homes and 3,000 in the Olympic Village organised by the London Development Agency. In the run up to the Olympics the predicted impacts were to create 30,000 new jobs between 2009 and 2012, in addition to this the workforce on the Olympic site is expected to increase to 6,000 . This will economically boost the local community of East London, and may provide useful experiences for the workers, allowing them to become more employable and possibly find a job easier. In addition to this the creation of these jobs may make those who have negative views of the Olympics feel more comfortable due to the provision of jobs to the local people in order to aid regeneration, 24% of the workers were local residents, therefore the point of job provision to locals to aid regeneration can be proved. To add to this 58% of the workers were from London and 9% were previously unemployed, and for this reason I feel that the Olympic Committee completed a good job to ensure that East London, London and unemployed workers were priority for work respectively. In addition to providing employment, the regional development agencies outside of London such as East of England development agency who received £1.15 million to work with unemployed people to help gain skills and experience, this will potentially help them back into paid work through taking on volunteer roles in culture and sport - all of this just adds to some of the Legacy the Olympics has left the UK economically. On a national scale, online sales reduced during the month of the Olympics by 6.7% between July and August to record the worst performance in 5 years. This is because people chose to take the once in a lifetime opportunity to watch these Olympics LIVE, therefore gluing themselves to a television instead of online shopping. But sporting good stores saw an increase in sales, which aided the "other stores" category to increase 1.5%, but unfortunately this was offset by 0.7% fall in department store sales, and 2.7% fall in household goods stores July to August . The estimated cost of the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics was £9.35 Billion, including a £2.7 Billion contingency fund. This has had major impacts on a national scale as £6 billion of this came directly from government, therefore more cuts to public services had to take place to ensure that this money was available in time, but this government spending could be seen to stimulate the economy and generate jobs for local people. And without this we would not have been able to host one of the most successful Olympics in history.

The Olympic Games Impact Study analysed the with and without the games effect, and was able to conclude that London's GDP would increase by £5.9 billion between 2005 - 2016, and the impact for the UK as a whole was estimated to be £1.9 billion. The greatest of this impact for London would be during the pre-Games construction period, whereas for the UK the impact would be greatest during the Olympics at around £1.067 billion. The variations in these numbers do however suggest the 'with Olympics' scenario will be displaced from the UK to London compared to the without scenario economically. This therefore suggests a 'regional' split between London and the rest of the UK, which is very understandable due to the majority of the Olympics being hosted in London.