Lord Coe’s Olympics organising committee has been slammed by London Assembly member John Biggs for its ticket website that he claims isn’t working.

A message pops up on screen when you place the tickets in the website basket to reserve them that says ‘No tickets found’.

These were tickets offered for sale at 11am yesterday (Wednesday) which he says were still being offered 24 hours later.

Biggs, whose east London constituency includes the Olympics Park, said: “It is reprehensible that the organising committee have been unable to design a system that offers tickets that actually exist, rather than tickets that have long since sold out.

“It appears they’ve tried to win the gold medal for the worst ticket selling operation in the whole of human history.”

The website was taken down at 11pm last night for 12 hours of maintenance when a notice came on screen declaring “Scheduled updates to the site are taking place”, he found.

“This beggars belief,” John added. “Who in their right mind schedules updates to a ticket website in the middle of a 24-hour sales window?”

He is writing to Lord Coe to find out why this has happened. He is also demanding a public apology to everyone paying for the Olympics through their council tax who can’t buy a ticket online.