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Camden New Journal - by PAUL KEILTHY
Published: 16 August 2007

Science institute may get the go ahead

A MULTI-MILLION pound science institute could form part of a new development in Somers Town if the controversial sale of publicly-owned land behind the British Library goes ahead, the New Journal has learned.
The Medical Research Council (MRC), Britain’s most prestigious science institution which can lay claim to the discoveries of DNA fingerprinting, the human genome, and the medical application of penicillin, has entered a strong bid for part of the 3.2-acre site known as Brill Place which is being sold by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS).
Protesters against the original plan to sell, including local councillors and Holborn and St Pancras MP Frank Dobson, have campaigned for the land, officially valued at £28m, to be kept for public use rather than developed as offices or private housing.
Earlier this year the MRC, which runs the world-famous National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR) at Mill Hill, bought the site of the National Temperance Hospital in Hampstead Road, Euston, for £28m, as part of its ambition to build a central London centre in partnership with University College London.
But some MRC insiders have complained that the hospital site’s 0.9 acres is too small, and the state-run science organisation has looked to the wider spaces of the land behind the British Library, originally set aside for the library’s extension and now on the market by DCMS “to get best value for tax-payers money”.

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