• DISTURBINGLY, current publicity material for the project gives every impression that construction of the proposed immunological building for the Royal Free at Hampstead Green is going ahead without further ado.

In fact there are still major unresolved issues of which the community needs to be made aware, and which the hospital has a responsibility to make clear.

The present status of the hospital’s planning application is that it has been granted subject to certain conditions.

The most important of these is that Camden require that the hospital produce designs to be certified by independent, suitably qualified, consultant surveyors that demonstrate that the project can be delivered with no more than negligible damage to neighbouring buildings.

There are many pages on the section 106 agreement devoted to this. The latest version of the hospital’s detailed basement construction plan (DBCP) on which they publicly consulted a couple of months ago had been shown as not being adequate to meet the above standard, and the hospital’s design team had, to all intents and purposes, to go back to the drawing board.

The submissions of the St Stephen’s Trust team of experts were instrumental in this conclusion having been reached.

The hospital’s project group, Royal Free Charity Developments Ltd (RFCD) is currently on a charm offensive, holding monthly update meetings with principals including St Stephen’s Trust, the Heath and Hampstead Society and Hampstead Green Neighbourhood Group (HGNG).

Most importantly RFCD have at long last agreed actively to consult with the St Stephen’s Trust team of experts with regular fortnightly meetings.

The key role of the trust team of experts is to bring their very considerable knowledge of ground conditions in the area to bear on the hospital’s experts’ proposals for the DBCP.

At a meeting of the Royal Free’s Environmental Liaison Group reference was made to the above facts and the chair of the NHS hospital trust, Dominic Dodd, confirmed that it was the intention of the hospital to continue with these meetings so that an agreed conclusion could be reached as to whether the project can indeed be built with no more than negligible damage to neighbouring buildings.

In other words the jury is very much still out and the indications are, due to the further ground movement research that is needed, that this will remain the case for several months.

On the other hand the impression put over by this new publicity material from the hospital makes it seem like this is a done deal which, of course, it is not.

We demand that the current publicity material be withdrawn and amended to make it clear that much further work needs to be done.

JEFF GOLD
Hampstead Green Neighbourhood Group