Hold PCT to account

Published: 21 April, 2011

• SO Camden’s primary care trust (PCT) has failed to take up their legal right to a lease with peppercorn rent at the very heart of the King’s Cross development (NHS miss deadline, April 14).

This was part of the planning-gain agreement for the Somers Town community and hard-fought legal right that was negotiated in 2005. It’s a crying shame that the opportunity has been allowed to lapse. The space is the iconic tenement Stanley Building by the German Gym.

It’s highly questionable for the NHS to argue that there is adequate capacity a mile away at Warren Street (UCH and Stephenson House) and in United Health’s two Bloomsbury GP practices.

The developers Argent have told me that they have spent £500,000 on architectural plans for sympathetic adaption of the building and they’re hopping mad at the NHS intransigence. 

I have asked that accounting for why this valuable opportunity is being thrown away be taken as an urgent matter at Camden’s health scrutiny committee tonight (Thursday).  

The committee has the prerogative to make a referral to the secretary of state if it feels an opportunity to develop a facility has been lost through incompetence and to the detriment of our community. 

I’d like to explore whether we could, at this 11th hour, turn the situation around. 

CLLR PAUL BRAITHWAITE
Lib Dem, Cantelowes ward