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 ?Stop the sell-off, build the homes we need, demand protesters on Saturday morning |
Challenge to Gordon Brown over housing
on prime site
WITH government departments apparently in stalemate over the sale of one of Camden’s last prime chunks of land, demonstrators spent Saturday morning demanding that the Prime Minister intervene to ensure it is used for housing.
Campaigners surrounded the 3.6 acres of vacant land behind the British Library in Somers Town, which has been the focus of housing hopes since the New Journal revealed in April it was to be sold by its owners the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS).
Amid musical support from carnival band Rhythms for Resistance, protest spokeswoman Candy Udwin said: “This is public land that should be put to public use. The people of Somers Town, many of whom live in overcrowded conditions, and who have few public facilities, particularly for the young people, need this land.”
As youngsters helped paint a mural announcing “this land is our land”, she called on Gordon Brown to honour pledges to build social housing on vacant government land, made in the Housing Bill published this week.
The sale process was due to be complete by the end of the year but has hit delays as the DCMS consider a bid by the government-sponsored Medical Research Council (MRC) to build a £350 million bio-science laboratory on the site against an array of proposals by private developers, understood to have made higher offers.
A spokesman for the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills, which part funds the MRC, said it has been in talks with DCMS over the sale, lining up another big gun alongside University College London, Cancer Research UK, and the Wellcome Trust. |
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