From cheers to jeers: chronology of the G4S cock-up

06 July 2005
2012 Olympics awarded to London. The following year, the London organising committee Locog estimates that 10,000 guards would be “a reasonable basis to invite tenders” (finds a subsequent National Audit Office report). This prompts the costs of venue security to be estimated at £282m.

07 July 2005
Four separate suicide bomb attacks on London’s public transport network kill 52 people. More than 700 are injured.

December 2010
G4S is awarded the contract to recruit 2,000 security staff for the 2012 Olympics venues and manage 8,000 additional personnel made up of volunteers and other staff recruited from colleges of higher education.

March 2011
G4S Olympic security contract commences.

06 December 2011
The Department of Culture, Media and Sport’s Olympic progress report reveals that, following further consultation, the costs for security are likely to be £553m and the amount of security personnel required, 23,700. The report identifies “a significant recruitment challenge”.

As a result, the Home Office begins discussions with the Ministry of Defence about the provision of military personnel “to act in security roles”. The MoD is already seeking to cut its budget by 8 per cent as a result of the defence spending review.

Locog’s late planning undermined its negotiating position and ability to drive down costs Margaret Hodge MP

07 December 2011
The chair of the culture, media and sport select committee, John Whittingdale, writes to Locog asking for the latest estimate for the number of security guards to be provided by G4S, the number of British armed services personnel which will be used to secure venues, and the number of foreign security personnel which would accompany each team.

17 January 2012
Locog Chairman Lord Coe sends a letter to John Whittingdale to explain its budget. It attaches a letter signed by permanent secretaries to the Home Office (Dame Helen Ghosh) and the DCMS (Jonathan Stephens) which explains that Locog’s original estimation of the number of security personnel required by the Games was based on estimates “from the 2002 Manchester Commonwealth Games with some Olympic information from the [2006] Turin Winter Olympic Games”.

March 2012
Public Accounts Committee Chair, Margaret Hodge expresses concerns about the security bill and says “Locog’s estimates for venue security could have been better informed much earlier, and that Locog’s late planning undermined its negotiating position and ability to drive down costs”

5/6 July 2012
The time that G4S Chief Executive Nick Buckles says he found out about the shortfall in Olympic venue security staff numbers.

11 July
The first time that “G4S admitted to any minister that they would not be able to deliver the numbers of security personnel that they had promised.”

12 July 2012
It finally emerges that the government is being forced to send in 3,500 troops to cover the shortfall of security staff caused by the failure of G4S to fulfil its contractual obligations.

Understaffing issues continue to dog G4S’s Olympic security provison, as Greater Manchester Police Authority reveals it has had to send in police officers to cover a shortfall in security staff at a hotel used by Olympic teams in Salford. The company’s share price takes a hammering and pressure increases on Nick Buckles in the final days before the games are due to start.