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Convention centre scrapped
Mayor Ken Livingstone has scrapped plans for a central London convention centre and luxury hotel in the West End, blaming the government’s u-turn on bed tax.
Mr Livingstone said the plan for a high-profile 5,000-seat venue was “a non-runner” after the government decided against introducing a levy on tourists’ stay in hotels.
Business tourism is worth £3.2billion a year, three times the leisure tourism industry, and Mr Livingstone had hoped to raise money by attracting international corporate bosses to a sate-of-the-art venue in Tottenham Court Road or Regent Street.
He said: “Convention centres do not make money.
“The only way it would have been financed would be with a subsidy through the development of a hotel at the site. The bed tax would have funded it. Now the government has scrapped bed tax there is no prospect of a convention centre going ahead.”
Livingstone first announced his plans to build a convention centre in Bloomsbury last October. |
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