This year's FA Cup final has been switched to Cardiff's Millennium Stadium because of delays in the redevelopment of Wembley Stadium.

The decision has been confirmed by builders Multiplex and comes after FA and Wembley chiefs finally accepted that construction work on the £757million stadium would not be completed in time.

FA chief Brian Barwick and Wembley chief executive Michael Cunnah made a site visit to the stadium yesterday with other FA and Wembley officials, and then had a meeting with Martin Tidd, the UK managing director of Multiplex.

Following that meeting, and with Multiplex unable to offer the necessary guarantees, the decision to abandon all hope of staging the FA Cup final at the new national stadium was taken.

In a statement to the Australian stock exchange Multiplex said the FA had taken the decision because it was not completely confident Wembley would be ready by May 13th.

The decision is a bitter blow for the FA who had hoped that after so many problems with the project, the stadium would have been ready on time.

They had already allowed Multiplex to move the completion deadline several times. The original hand-over date was to be the autumn of 2005, then it was extended to January 31st, 2006 and then until March 31.

Multiplex, an Australian firm, are expected to lose more than £100million on building the stadium and will be penalised £1million a week for over-running the deadline.

Even if they do complete construction by March 31st, however, the new stadium would have needed to train up hundreds of staff, and satisfy safety officials it can hold major events.