Bill for maintaining Dome to hit £20m before it reopens

The bill for maintaining the empty Millennium Dome will hit£20m - more than £64,000 a week - by the time it reopens in four years.

Yesterday the Government said in the Lords that the bill for security and maintenance staff had already reached £8m, and that when the £800m attraction reopens in 2007 - six years after it closed - the total is expected to pass £20m.

Opposition MPs condemned the rising cost of keeping the Dome empty and accused ministers of shirking responsibility for the "disaster" of the Millennium Dome.

Adrian Sanders, a Liberal Democrat culture spokesman, said: "If a council were responsible for allowing expenditure to run away like this they would be surcharged by ministers. Who in the Government is going to take responsibility for this terrible waste of money? £20m could keep a lot of post offices open."

The Dome, a flagship Government scheme, failed to attract its projected number of visitors, and received more than £600m of lottery money before closing at the end of 2000. Initial sale attempts fell through, and the search for a new owner has cost £10m so far.

Last year the Government negotiated a deal (subject to planning permission) to give the dome to a private consortium, Meridian Delta Ltd and Anschutz Entertainment Group, in return for a share of profits over the next 25 years.

It was hoped the Dome could open as a 20,000-seat arena for sporting and music events next year. But Lord Rooker, a minister in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, admitted this week that the sale agreement would not be "unconditional" until next year. He said the Government's current estimates were that the Dome would not re-open until "late 2006 or possibly 2007".

The building, approved in 1997 by Tony Blair, has cost at least £64,000 a week in security, insurance and building and maintenance bills. It cost millions more to dismantle the exhibition, and only £5m was recouped by auctioning off its contents.

The Government hopes that Philip Anschutz, a right-wing American billionaire with reported links to President George Bush, will revive the Dome's fortunes. Mr Anschutz is the founder of Qwest Communications, the troubled oil, telecoms and entertainment firm which is under federal investigation.

One plan for the Dome may already be running into trouble. Sol Kerzner, whose firm Kerzner International hopes to set up a casino on the site, is being reviewed by Britain's gaming authorities to determine whether he is a "fit and proper person". Mr Kerzner, who built the Sun City resort in South Africa, is being investigated over allegations of bribery during the apartheid era.