National Temperance Hospital - Calls for building to accommodate social housing as MRC prepare to put it on market

DOCTORS at the National Temperance Hospital (NTH) on Hampstead Road hung up their stethoscopes in 1990. And, other than a short spell when it offered temporary office space, the Victorian building has been empty ever since.

Now the property’s owners, the Medical Research Council (MRC), are set to sell it to the highest bidder as they try to raise funds to help pay for their part of the new medical research laboratory in Brill Place, Somers Town.
 

The MRC bought the building in 2006 for £28million and spent a further £800,000 on consultants’ fees to work out how to spruce it up – but soon after they joined a consortium of science bodies to build a the £660m super-lab behind the British Library, meaning the hospital has been boarded up and left empty.

With its future still in doubt, a new battle is about to be waged to use the former hospital, which dates from 1873, for social housing. With a new office development, dubbed “Regent’s Place”, being built further along Hampstead Road – home to blue-chip businesses such as Russian energy giant Gazprom and bankers Santander – pressure is mounting on Camden Council to force the MRC to agree to a planning brief which would make the bulk of the site housing instead of yet more offices.
 

Holborn and St Pancras Labour MP Frank Dobson said: “Getting all or some of the NTH site for housing should have been a condition for granting planning permission to the Brill Place scheme.

“The council decided they could not do that. Now, when it is eventually sold, they should make sure there is some housing on the site anyway. That should just be the minimum.”

With the back of the building overlooking St James’ Gardens, it seems tailor-made to offer some respite to the borough’s housing crisis, according to Somers Town Labour ward councillor Heather Johnson. She said that while the timing would probably not fit, it could be used to re-house people living on the nearby Regent’s Park estate whose homes are threatened with demolition due to new tunnels to accommodate the planned high-speed rail link to Birmingham.

“They say they need to sell it to fund the UKMRCI plan – but when you look at it, £28m is a drop in the ocean compared to what they plan to spend,” said Cllr Johnson.

“Camden Council is not in a position to buy it, but the Brill Place land was partly earmarked for housing  and this would be an ideal use for the site.”
 

The Town Hall’s housing chief Labour councillor Julian Fulbrook said that despite the huge price tag the council could still have some influence over what happens next to the site.

He said: “Where there is a will there is a way – this would be the ideal place for new social housing.”

And while the building – which is not listed – will need to be comprehensively redeveloped, the MRC have said they will look to turn a profit on the mothballed site.

Property developer Chris Shaw, who manages similar-sized ventures in the borough, believes the MRC will have no trouble finding a buyer. 

He said: “I think even in this current market there would be considerable interest in this site.”

A spokesman for the MRC said no plans had yet been drawn up and they could not say when it would be officially on the market. 

“The MRC is now considering potential strategies for the National Temperance Hospital site, keeping all options open while in consultation with the respective government departments,” the spokesman added. “At present it would not be wise to make a rapid decision about any one of these strategic options, but any decision taken in future will take into account obtaining best value for the site for the public purse.”