Olympic officials expressed surprise yesterday at the controversy over the soaring budget for regeneration and facilities at the 2012 Games and gave confident backing to the London organisers. After the meeting of the executive board of the IOC in Kuwait, two leading figures emphasised that preparations are on time and the cost of running the Games was as predicted.

Denis Oswald, the chairman of the IOC Co-ordination Commission overseeing the 2012 Games, said: “London has made a lot of progress and the time lines for the project are going according to schedule. I am particularly pleased to see the way that the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games [which is responsible for running the actual events] and the Olympic Delivery Authority [ODA, which is building the facilities] are fully integrated.” He also praised the “excellent recruitment policy”.

London’s preparations were criticised vigorously by Jack Lemley, who resigned last month as ODA chairman, and also by national and local politicians worried about the increased cost of the regeneration and facilities budget for the Olympic park, near Stratford. Tessa Jowell, the Olympics Minister, told MPs last week that the figure of £2.35 million for building venues would increase by £900 million, while a further £1 billion may be approved by the Treasury for regeneration.

Oswald said that there had been a lot of misinformation but added: “It would be wrong for the IOC to make knee-jerk reactions to the figures being mentioned and to the discussions of the past weeks since we prefer to take a closer look when we visit London next year. But when we discussed figures with the organisers in October, we were comfortable with how things stood.”

Gilbert Felli, the executive director of the Olympic Games, said: “We have the feeling at the IOC that we are a hostage of the discussion. It is clear that a lot of costs are not linked to the Games. We do not believe that the budget for the Games has increased, so that is why we are a bit surprised about all this discussion.”