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Brill Place, highlighted in white in the left of the photo; inset: John Mason |
We need better homes, not a wasteful £500m vanity project
Promises that the National Institute for Medical Research will bring jobs to Somers Town fall wide of the real needs of the people that live there, says John Mason
THE chief executive of the Medical Research Council, Leszek Borysiewicz, claims that the proposed £500 million National Institute for Medical Research centre will bring Somers Town “new jobs, an improved environment, local education opportunities and health advances that will benefit generations to come”.
With University College London (UCL) as partner and the support of the Prime Minister and the country’s two largest health charities, who in their right mind would refuse such a gift?
But this isn’t the first time that Somers Town’s people have been offered “gifts’’ In the 1970s it was £600 million for the British Library, now dwarfed by the £6 billion St Pancras International terminus and railway lands development.
If even a fraction of this largesse had trickled down to local people, the area would now be richer than Mayfair, Chelsea and Belgravia put together. The sad fact is that none of these has made any impression on 40 years of economic decline.
According to Anthony Kessel of Camden Primary Healthcare Trust, death rates in Somers Town are 35 per cent higher than the national average (Life expectancy lowest in capital, New Journal January 3) . Even within Camden, there is a shocking 10-year difference in life expectancy between the richest and poorest wards.
Compared to this, Mr Borysiewicz’s promises are unconvincing.
Worse, he also comes with some embarrassing baggage. The National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR), part of the MRC, has been situated since 1950 in Mill Hill. The attempt to relocate it in central London has led to open hostility, serious enough to attract the attention of the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee.
Its report revealed an industrial relations catastrophe.
One witness from Imperial College London unsurprisingly described the proposed move as “illogical, expensive and wasteful”.
The select committee found that, instead of seeing whether new research units were needed in hospitals or reviewing the role of its other institutes, the MRC had concentrated instead on relocating buildings.
So has anything changed? The MRC now has the support of UCL and the two most powerful health charities in the country – the Wellcome Foundation and Cancer Research UK .
UCL has already helped itself to a large slice of South Camden Community School’s playground to build a sports hall, paying just £50,000-a-year rent. It is also central to the controversial proposal to build an academy school in Swiss Cottage. This cartel of medical interests has been assembled with little, if any, public scrutiny.
The NIMR’s existing site in Mill Hill is larger, and offers more security for the level four virus and animal testing carried out in its laboratories.
The only argument for taking our land in Somers Town is to allow closer links with UCL.
Is spending huge amounts of money on a move that serves the interests of academics and drug companies necessarily good for cancer patients?
This is obviously a central London vanity project with little reference to wider aims.
Is the proposal in Somers Town’s interest? No. Building homes and providing better local facilities would meet its health needs more effectively than a powerful medical elite looking for a central London location.
The proposal would have to be refused planning permission since the local planning brief requires 50 per cent housing in any new development on the site.
It also ignores Gordon Brown’s recent pledge to allow local authorities to build new homes in areas of greatest need and to use vacant public land for the three million new homes he has promised.
There are more than 15,000 on the waiting list in Camden. Overcrowding is a grim reality with too many young people having nothing to do and nowhere to go, except to get into trouble on the streets.
All we are demanding is that what goes on this site should offer direct benefit to local people.
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