Spurs win Olympic review

Spurs and Leyton Orient have been granted a judicial review into the decision to award use of the Olympic Stadium to West Ham United.

Permission granted to challenge decision over stadium

Tottenham Hotspur and Leyton Orient have been granted a judicial review into the decision to award use of the Olympic Stadium to West Ham United after the 2012 Games. The Olympic Park Legacy Company originally selected West Ham over Spurs as the preferred tenant of the £486million venue in East London, but the Premier League club are challenging the decision by West Ham's local authority to provide a £40million loan to fund the move. But Spurs have been granted permission to mount a legal challenge by Mr Justice Collins, whose only task at this stage was to decide whether Tottenham have an "arguable" case. A further hearing with full arguments from all sides will now have to be held. Tottenham's attorney, Dinah Rose, said Newham Council's loan had given West Ham amounted to unfair state aid. "West Ham was not and is not itself in a financial position to borrow £40m from a private lender or to make a bid for the stadium on its own, as Newham itself recognised," Rose told the court. Rose added that the club's accounts showed "that it had short and long-term debts of £104m, most of which were due in the next three years."