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Real waste of public land
• THE Government’s decision to sell the site behind the British Library for a medical research centre flies in the face of ministers’ declared policy of allocating brownfield sites for housing, and flagrantly ignores the wishes and needs of the people of Camden and their elected representatives.
But it is also wrong and foolish in many other respects.
The security issue is paramount, and already well argued. This aspect extends beyond that of the building itself, however – there will be constant and heavy transport in and out of the centre, some at least will carry expensive equipment and radio-active materials.
Security demands will require yet further calls on the police, in an area where they are already over-stretched.
Do we need yet more police, and – with the potential terrorist threat – some, at least, armed?
The nature of the proposed centre, and policing requirements, will mean that it will need high fences and secure gates, which will be closed outside office hours. This is not appropriate on a key site in an area so full of important public buildings.
Research stations are normally sited well away from city centres, for obvious reasons other than security. They require substantial space for laboratories and equipment. Using the Brill Place site for this purpose is a wasteful use of this public land.
The King’s Cross/ St Pancras area is now one of the world’s major transport hubs. Development of the land as proposed will throw a still greater burden on local transport capacity.
Construction works will be complex, they are sure to take many years to complete, and heavy lorries are bound to be visiting the site over the period of the Olympic Games. We will already have the inconvenience of building on the nearby Railway Lands at the same time. This must be unacceptable.
This massive development will be even closer to people in Somers Town, and even more of a nuisance, than the rebuilding of St Pancras. No one can think that locals will be prepared to go through all that again. Use of most of the site for public housing will be quicker, and far less damaging to people’s lives. There is still an overwhelming case for a mixed scheme as contained in the development plan approved by the council in 2000, when there was a Labour majority.
In particular, I believe there is a strong argument for a Mosque and Islamic cultural centre, as I have already proposed. Is there also a need for a health centre?
All interests must be united on one objective – to ensure that ministers’ plans are rejected. There would seem to be several ways forward:
* By calling for judicial review of the decision. The Freedom of Information Act should reveal a great deal about the offers that were received, and much other detail.
* A petition to be signed not only by all councillors, but as many of Camden’s citizens as possible.
* A public demonstration and march to Parliament Square early in the new year.
* An early decision by the development control committee and the whole council in principle to reject any amendment to the development plan in respect of this site;
* Extensive lobbying of the Mayor of London to ensure he backs Camden’s views.
* Ministers’ pronouncement is yet another example of over-centralised decision making over-riding the wishes and needs of local people, and this one is also foolish. We must oppose it with every means in our power.
JOHN LEFLEY
Regent’s Park Road, NW1
Betrayal
An open letter to Gordon Brown
• DEAR Prime Minister,
I have been a loyal member of the Labour Party for 55 years; was a senior national officer at head office for 11 years; and a Labour councillor from 1964-78 and 1998-present.
My family – the Shinwells – helped to establish the Labour Representation Committee, later the Labour Party, at the Memorial Hall in 1900; served on Glasgow City Council and in Parliament,and fought all their lives for socialism.
Thus I am appalled at your decision to support the whole idea of a medical research centre on the site of the land behind the British Library. If you and your advisers, whoever they are, had bothered to consult local councillors and residents in Somers Town or had read the New Journal articles and letters on the issue of the land over the past few months, you would have noted that the majority want the land for council housing and leisure facilities.
That we have a waiting list of 20,000 plus; that we have no land left in Camden upon which to build council housing; that Somers Town is a built-up area with a hell of a lot of suicides, poor families, and housing needs, obviously was never understood by yourself or your advisers.
That you have rightly stated that we need to build three million homes over the next few years conflicts, does it not, with your decision to publicly announce that this site should be handed over the to the Medical Research Council?
The housing needs of people, including large families and disabled people, means little to the national government and its officers.
That is why many of us, loyal Labour Party members as well, will fight this strenuously. If it goes to planning and Development Control Committee it will not get planning permission and we will all go to a public inquiry… and so on.
The Ramsay McDonald government of 1921, albeit right wing and not at all revolutionary, at least had the ability and desire to set up the whole system of council or corporation housing.
I would hope that the present Government will realise it has been wrongly and stupidly advised and even at this date reverse the support it has given so publicly for the medical research centre for this site behind the British Library. This is sheer betrayal of all we socialists believe in, including housing as a social service.
The Shinwells must be turning in their respective graves and looking down on what seems to be nothing like socialism in national and local government.
My beliefs and my attitude of caring for society give me no alternative but to fight alongside anyone to get this land turned into council housing for the sake of my housing cases; and for the idealism of my parents, and family members.
CLLR Roger Robinson
Labour, St Pancras and Somers Town ward
Done deal?
• I RECKON the use of the land by the Medical Research Council was a done deal from about two or three years ago.
The governors of the medical research centre at Mill Hill long ago proposed a move to Euston (the actual site unspecified), about the time that Colin Blakemore was appointed director of that establishment. Reading the report at the time, I wondered where the site could possibly be. Now I know. So much for promises, “public consultation” and “bids”.
I’ll wager there are many things such as this, settled by the Government and its agencies/lobbies much in advance of informing the people it concerns, so that the time for citizens’ protests is minimal.
JUNE GIBSON
Chandos Way, NW11
Need for housing
• RESIDENTS and Camden Council have been very clear with the Government over many months that what is needed at Brill Place is more affordable housing and more facilities for local people.
We residents of Somers Town deserve more and better local services, shops and amenities.
Brill Place could have been the site of something really special, like an environmentally friendly mini-city. By ignoring locals, Labour have shown not only that they don’t care about people in Camden but also how unimaginative and uninspired they are.
I completely disagree with those who say a medical research laboratory is a bad idea but it should have been included within a wider plan to provide services the area needs, not to the exclusion of everything else.
CLLR FRED CARVER Liberal Democrat,
Cantelowes ward
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