The Unite union has more than doubled its planned expenditure on a controversial Birmingham hotel project.
Leaked accounts indicate that the union spent £74m on the National Education and Conference Centre & Hotel up to the end of 2019.
In 2015, media reports claimed the project was expected to cost £35m. The accounts do not show any evidence of a re-evaluation of the property.
The contract to build the 170-room hotel and conference centre was awarded in 2015 to the Flanagan Group, a Liverpool company run by an associate of the union’s general secretary, Len McCluskey. Another contract on the project was given to a company owned by the son of Joe Anderson, Liverpool’s mayor.
