Olympic Park cultural project receives funding

A planned cultural and education centre at the Olympic Park is to receive £141m funding, the Treasury has said.

The spending has been announced in the National Infrastructure Plan, external published ahead of the chancellor's Autumn Statement.

Also announced were £150m for housing revamps in four London boroughs and £55m for a rail extension in east London.

The money is part of a package worth almost £350m to London.

The Victoria and Albert Museum and Sadler's Wells are planning to be a part of Olympicopolis, while University College London will move to a site south of the Orbit sculpture.

University of the Arts London is also involved and will centralise its London College of Fashion's 6,500 students and staff on one site for the first time in its 100-year history.

The spending announcement included plans to extend the London Overground, creating a new rail link to London's largest regeneration scheme at Barking Riverside.

The Mayor of London Boris Johnson said the Olympicopolis project would generate millions of pounds for east London's economy and support thousands of jobs.

He said: "This is an important milestone in our plans to realise a legacy from London's 2012 Games that reaps economic and social dividends to last for generations to come."

But Sadiq Khan, Labour's Shadow London Minister, criticised the government's record on infrastructure and the level of house building in the city.

He said: "What Londoners most desperately need is more funding to build genuinely affordable homes and nothing announced today will make that happen."