Camden New Journal - News: Superlab project is a financial risk, say MPs

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Camden New Journal - By PAUL KEILTHY
Published: 31 January 2008

Superlab project is a financial risk, say MPs

THE £500 million super laboratory announced by Gordon Brown for Somers Town is “high risk” financially and could be seriously delayed by local planning protests, a committee of MPs concluded on Thursday.
In the first review of the proposals by the Medical Research Centre to house 1,500 scientists on land behind the British Library, the Commons innovation, universities and skills committee called them “one of the most exciting developments in UK research for some time” but questioned how the £300 million of public cash for the site would be raised and spent.
It also questioned why the MRC had not met Camden Council to discuss the plans, which breach guidelines demanding housing on the site.
In questioning before the committee, MRC boss Sir Leszek Borysiewicz said that the National Temperance Hospital site in Hampstead Road, bought by MRC in an abortive first attempt to move to London, would be sold. Other planning matters would have to wait until Nobel laureate Sir Paul Nurse had designed the centre, he added.
The New Journal revealed that the government was selling the 3.6-acre Brill Place site last spring and published first details of the superlab scheme in August.

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