FORUM: Boris must pick up ‘superlab’ pieces
Published: 13 January, 2011
by JOHN MASON
The go-ahead for the UK Centre for Medical Research and Innovation laboratory in Somers Town represents a political capitulation
How did they do it? How did Camden give permission for an industrial plant 300 yards from Euston Road, next to its most important Grade I-listed building on the edge of one of the borough’s most densely populated areas?
The obvious answer: the council capitulated to a powerful coalition of medical and academic interests, spearheaded by University College London, the Wellcome Foundation and Medical Research Council.
Nothing, it is claimed, could stand in the way of such a combination.
If this is true, the decision to permit development had nothing to do with planning. It was “political” in the crudest sense.
“Taking the ‘fight’ to the London mayor or select committee”, far from being “pointless” according to Councillor Peter Brayshaw (New Journal, December 30) is the logical and right thing to do.
Cllr Brayshaw has never once mentioned the planning issues raised by a complex scheme in this location. Consequently, they must now be confronted by the Mayor of London.
What are the issues? First, the building is too large for the site.
Second, a more balanced mixed-use scheme, as proposed by the council in 2003, is better for the needs of the area and for the site itself.
The 119-page report prepared by planning officers lacked any concerted focus on these two issues.
Instead it made a spurious attempt to match advantages and disadvantages claimed for the proposal.
But the planning department is neither equipped nor required to do this.
Its proper role as land use regulator was to consider the particular merits or demerits of the structure in this location, not the future of national science policy.
Setting aside planning policy creates a precedent in which every significant site in the borough becomes the subject of “unique” pressures, entrenching a system under which local needs cannot win.
According to this inverted logic, claims to “national” or “international” significance will always trump local interests.
This new world has neither rules nor any policy that cannot be discarded.
It is one in which the department becomes too close to developers, large architectural practices and consultants.
Hence, the demands of the powerful always defeat the needs of the powerless, national priorities triumph over local interests and the role of representing those interests (the raison d’être for a local authority) is jettisoned.
What should the council have done?
It has to know what it is being asked to decide. If it supported its officers’ decision to extend the discussion into national science policy, it should have debated this question in full council, setting out the stark policy issues and their social consequences.
The planning department would thus be confined to strict consideration of the centre’s location.
Alternatively, it could have made clear that its role was strictly confined to land use regulation within its own established framework.
It did neither.
It discarded its own planning brief, replacing it with a focus on the arguments for and against the scheme, bypassing the crucial question of its sensitive location.
Mayor Boris Johnson must now do what Camden has failed to do: pick up the pieces and decide whether a quasi-industrial use for this site is justifiable.
We need to know the size and bulk of the centre relative to surrounding buildings and whether its construction, functioning, potential hazards and possible future changes are likewise appropriate to these surroundings.
• John Mason is a town planning expert and tenants’ activist
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