IN Glasgow the revolving tower is stuck fast, Portsmouth’s waterfront landmark opened five years late, and near Doncaster a showcase for eco-friendly living is to be bulldozed to make way for a housing estate.

The troubled schemes were all funded with millions of pounds from the national lottery by the millennium commission to provide a lasting statement about Britain in the year 2000.

As the commission prepares to wind up at the end of the year, however, an audit of projects has shown that much of the commission’s £2 billion was “squandered”. More than half the projects have either closed, opened late or encountered serious problems.

Most notorious was the Millennium Dome, repeatedly bailed out with more than £600m of lottery money — and still costing £30,000 a month, despite being sold to Philip Anschutz, the American entertainment mogul.

Others include the Bath Spa project, which opened in August three years late and £30m over budget, of which £8m came from the millennium commission. Last week its showpiece rooftop pool closed for four days after an electrical fault.

Critics argue that many of the projects were misconceived, others were put in the wrong place or should never have been financed by the lottery. “The dome is the living embodiment of what has become a liability rather than a legacy. A lot of what was done at the time of the millennium was money unwisely spent,” said Hugo Swire, the Tory culture spokesman. “We could have done an awful lot more in a lot of areas. I feel it was a squandered opportunity.”

Mike O’Connor, director of the commission, pointed instead to successes such as the Eden project in Cornwall, the Lowry arts centre in Salford, Greater Manchester, and the Tate Modern gallery in London, as well as scores of small-scale schemes.

“Any visitor attraction has got to survive in a competitive market, so some of these projects do face challenges, but of the 225 projects we have funded, only three have closed,” said O’Connor. “I think it is a good record.”

He is now interim chief executive of the lottery body allocating funds to the Olympics, which has generated £60m of its £750m target. The millennium commission was set up in 1994 by the Tories to share 28p in every pound spent on national lottery tickets.

The commission was retained by Labour and used as part of its “cool Britannia” project to promote the image of a forward-looking country.

Chris Smith, Labour’s first culture secretary, said in 1997 that millennium projects would “reflect the aspiration and achievements of the British people as we cross the threshold of the year 2000”.

The Sunday Times has examined the record of 43 landmark millennium attractions — at sites that received at least £1m of lottery money. Of these, three have closed because of a lack of visitors and at least 11 opened late — the worst being the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth, which admitted visitors in October last year, five years late.

“The millennium commission let us down badly, it let the project be degraded,” said Mike Hancock, Liberal Democrat MP for Portsmouth South. “It’s an appalling series of cock-ups.”

Another 12 projects have had problems ranging from technical failings to budget overruns which have required bailouts from the taxpayer.

The Glasgow Science Centre, which received £37m, promised that visitors to its 400ft tower would be able to gaze at panoramic views as it rotated. The tower, which has attracted 46,000 visitors, has been closed since January last year after a breakdown in which four children and six adults were trapped 165ft above the ground. No date has been set for reopening.

John Mason, a Scottish National party councillor in Glasgow, said: “It has obviously been a complete waste of money. We are an engineering nation but this simply hasn’t worked. Heads should roll.”

Despite its failures, the Glasgow attraction has been blamed for siphoning off visitors from another millennium project 30 miles away — a science centre called the Big Idea in Irvine, Ayrshire. It closed in 2003 and is set to become a conference centre when the surrounding area is converted into a five-star golf course.

The most notorious failures included the Earth Centre, an environmental attraction near Doncaster, South Yorkshire, which received £36m to rescue an area of slagheaps. It closed in 2004 after disastrous visitor numbers.

The part of the site owned by the millennium commission — which had hoped that the centre would showcase environmentally friendly lifestyles — has been sold to a housing developer for a reported £5.7m.

Additional reporting: Iain Hollingshead

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