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Protesters near the controversial Brill Place site |
Brown goes for super lab over homes
‘We’ve been sold down the river’ say protesters as they vow to take direct action
PROTESTERS pledged ‘direct action’ after the Prime Minister crushed their hopes of new housing by announcing that a £500m medical research centre will be built on government land in Somers Town.
Months of campaigning against the sale of 3.6 acres of vacant land behind the British Library ended amid accusations of broken promises when Gordon Brown announced the site had been sold yesterday (Wednesday).
Anger also erupted over speculation that the £85million bid led by the Medical Research Centre wasn’t even the highest made by other bidders.
“We’ve been sold down the river,” said Dave Hoefling, chairman of the campaign body the Somers Town People’s Forum.
In response to questions by the New Journal about the lower price offered by the MRC, a government spokesman said it “made allowance for the value to the public of creating a world classs centre for medical research.”
But in June an official from the same Department for Culture told the New Journal the land would be “disposed of at the best price,” a statement that culture minister Margaret Hodge retracted in a letter to this newspaper in October.
A consortium of Britain’s leading bio-science institutions now plans to build the centre by 2013.
Although the super-lab will host some of the world’s leading scientists and aims to achieve break-throughs against cancer, HIV and flu, the complete absence of housing from its plans for the site have united all Camden’s political parties and prominent Somers Town residents’ groups in opposition.
Both the government’s housing policy – which advocates new houses on vacant brownfield land – and the council’s planning brief, which demands that the plot be at least half residential, appear to be breached by the sale.
Some residents are also concerned that the lab, which will house virulent pathogens and lab-animals for research, presents a security risk in the built-up, congested transport hub around King’s Cross.
Residents and ward councillors have united in the Somers Town People’s Forum to campaign for housing on the site since the New Journal revealed the site was up for sale and broke the news of the medical research centre plans this summer.
Mr Hoefling told the New Journal: “We are disappointed that Gordon Brown should renege on his promises over council housing.
“With this move they’ve made this area more dangerous than it already was and residents have been sold down the river.
“There will be direct action – we need to stop this building going ahead.”
Only four weeks ago and in the face of the Somers Town protest, the council’s Lib Dem / Conservative leadership pledged to intervene with government by stressing their commitment to the site’s planning brief, which included a requirement for at least 150 new houses.
Yesterday, council leader Keith Moffitt described the government’s decision as “disappointing”. He said: “Housing is a key priority for Camden – that site was a real opportunity. We will wait to see the full details of what they are proposing.”
His Tory environment chief Cllr Mike Greene, who said before the sale that a medical research centre would certainly lie outside the planning brief and would therefore be rejected by planners, went further. He said: “There have been security issues in the past and I’m not sure that I think security measures can go in an area that is conservationally very sensitive.”
Labour opposition leader Cllr Anna Stewart said: “I’ve made it clear that the site should be used for housing. Clearly the government have made the deliberations about balancing a prestigious scientific development against the need for housing but I’d have made a very different call.”
The winning consortium is led by the government-funded Medical Research Council, in partnership with University College London, the Wellcome Trust and Cancer Research UK.
Provost of the UCL Malcolm Grant said he was “thrilled that our combined vision to create a world-leading centre for medical research can go forward”.
The centre, planned by Nobel laureate Sir Paul Nurse and likely to house 1,500 researchers. is expected to be completed by 2013. |
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