‘Super lab’ will bring real benefits

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NEW designs for a proposed UK Centre for Medical Research lab (inset) in Somers Town should receive local support, says Peter Brayshaw

THE UKCMRI  have unveiled a revised set of designs for their proposed research laboratory in Somers Town.

They have also just published their “Scientific Vision and Research Strategy”. Their planning application is expected in August.

Like everyone else, I haven’t seen the application, the planning officers’ report or the final offer of Section 106 and other local community benefits.

But I hope that Camden’s development control committee, while seeking maximum community gains, will give a go-ahead to the plans.

I am not a scientist, but I find the arguments of Nobel Prize-winning Professor Sir Paul Nurse and his team very compelling.

They, and their peers in the medical research community, all believe this is the right project in the right place at the right time.

It will bring together 1,250 scientists, some from existing Cancer Research laboratories in Lincoln’s Inn Fields and Hertfordshire, and Medical Research Council laboratories in Mill Hill.

They will be next to University College London, a world-leading biomedical research university, Wellcome’s own headquarters and the unique concentration of world-class hospitals nearby.

The multi-disciplinary critical mass created will enable great strides towards conquering cancer, cardio-vascular diseases, diabetes, influenza and other killer diseases we all hate.

The project will also bring much-needed regeneration, community benefits, jobs and opportunities to the area.

The latest designs show a building visually and, to a large extent physically, open to the local community.

It includes teaching laboratories, where local teachers and students can increase their awareness of science and medical research.

There will be 1,500 people working there, a boost to the local economy.

I hope that skills-matching, training programmes, and outreach will lead to a growing proportion of local employment, reducing our area’s high unemployment and deprivation.

There will be a healthy living centre for the community, meeting spaces and facilities, and co-operation with a wide range of local community organisations, schools, and residents, based on extensive local consultations.

Some time ago Camden Council adopted a planning brief (only one of a series of relevant Camden and London planning policies).

That was when it was expected the only developer for the site would be a private profit-making company seeking luxury housing and having to offset that with some community housing and other benefits.

The UKCMRI proposal is entirely non-profit making, charitable and public.

As far as I know no developer has even approached Camden for permission for alternative schemes.

Land is not the constraint on housing in our area.

There are huge tracts with outline planning permission in King’s Cross Central.

The constraint on housing and other community facilities is finance, not land.

Public subsidy from the government (already being savagely cut back) or S106 contributions from profit-making developments are the only, scarce, sources.

If Camden does not give planning permission, the Mayor of London Boris Johnson will, with alacrity.

Or the secretary of state in the new government.

They are far less likely than Camden members to ask for local community benefits, and, I predict, would give carte blanche.

The choice is not between a utopian development of new social housing and community facilities, for which there is no available finance, and the UKCMRI.

The choice is between the UKCMRI and continued dereliction of the site.

• Peter Brayshaw is a Labour councillor for
St Pancras and Somers Town, where he lives, and a governor of UCL Hospitals.
This article is his personal view