West Ham stadium conversion: Balfour Beatty wants 'extra £50 million' to finish the job

The building firm is converting the Olympic Stadium into a home for West Ham United

Taxpayers could have to find tens of millions more to fund the conversion of the Olympic Stadium into West Ham United’s home as building firm Balfour Beatty presses for more cash.

Balfour Beatty — hit by a string of calamitous profit warnings and without a chief executive — won the deal to convert the stadium with a bid of £154 million.

But according to the industry website Construction Enquirer, Balfour has been pushing for around £200 million to complete the deal due to the technical complexity of the contract in a series of meetings with the client.

Sources told the Enquirer that builder Balfour Beatty is pushing for up to £50 million more to complete the job.

The firm, which declined to comment, has drafted in KPMG to carry out a forensic review of its troubled UK construction arm after reporting an extra £75 million in write-downs on troubled construction projects.

A spokesman for E20 Stadium — a joint venture between the London Legacy Development Corporation and London Newham Council set up to manage the venue — refused to comment on the talks but added: “The project still has close to two years to run and we are in no doubt Balfour Beatty can deliver the programme as planned. This is a complex project and there are always ongoing discussions about specific elements within it.”

Problems were found with the steel work on the stadium roof last month. The stadium will host five matches during the Rugby World Cup next year and will be the permanent home of West Ham from 2016.

Balfour Beatty has just appointed the former Qinetiq boss, Leo Quinn, as its new chief executive after sacking his predecessor, Andrew McNaughton, in May.

A proposed merger with smaller rival Carillion also fell apart in the summer amid a row over the fate of Balfour’s highly profitable US business Parsons Brinckerhoff, which Balfour planned to sell but Carillion wanted to keep.