Environment Monday - Why I wouldn't touch an appartment on the Barratts NIMR development with a bargepole

NIMR view elevation

Todays Environment Monday, is focussing on family friendly housing, which should be the first priority of anyone involved in housing planning in the Borough of Barnet, first though, I want to explain my long association with  the site of one of Mill Hill's major schemes. Much of the discussions about solving the housing crisis in London is focused on the development of so called brownfield sites. One of the huge developments currently going up in Mill Hill at the moment is the development by Barratts at the National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR)

Many people in Mill Hill were dismayed to see the building demolished. I was not one of them. I hated the place. It used to give me the creeps. Unlike most Mill Hill residents, I actually saw what went on within the place. When I was at school, I took a holiday job at the site back in 1978. My job? I was a lab porter. What did this mean? When I was told about the job, I thought it would be a really interesting and useful job. I was doing my A levels at Orange Hill School at the time (Physics, Biology and Maths), I had vague ideas about going to University at the time and maybe doing a degree in environmental sciences. I thought experience of working in a lab would help me. Sadly it had quite the opposite effect. I was assigned to work with two departments. The first was physiology and the second was parasitology. The experiences I had convinced me that music was a better career for someone with my gentle artistic temperament.

I went into the job holding the view that animal experimentation was a necessary evil. I still believe this to some extent.  The work being done in the parasitology department pretty much supported this view. They were working on treatments for schistosomaisis caused by Nile Liver flukes. This is a very nasty disease affecting tens of thousands of people in Africa. The disease is spread by snails and the parasite is then passed on to mammals through the water where the snails have laid their eggs. The labs in the parasitology department bred snails and would use these to extract fluke eggs to infect small rodents, to see if the treatment under development was effective. My role as a lab porter? The rodents would be infected, monitored and after a set period, euthenised and dissected to see whether the treatment had improved the condition of the liver of the rodent. Such science is done on a statistical basis. There is a control group that has no treatment and a group that has the treatment and all are controlled in such a way that the only variable is the treatment. My role in the process as a lab porter? I would collect the brown bags that the dead animals were left in after being dissected. I would take them to the incineration block and then throw them in the incinerator. I also had to put various implements in the washing machines. I didn't really see to much that worried me in this department and had no real qualms about the job. Although the liver flukes were dangerous, there were far more danagerous pathogens being worked on, such as green monkey fever. These had far more strict protocols for handling and disposal. I doubt they'd let a sixteen year old loose on them. 

The work in the physiology department was a bit different. They were working on a project to map the brain. This involved taking cats (rather like the moggy you have at home). They would be clamped into a device to hold them still. Once they were completely immobilised, the top of their skull would be cut off. I asked if they were in any way sedated. I was met with the look that an idiot gets when they ask the most stupid question imaginable. It was explained to me in words of one syllable that if you are measuring brain function, then anything that inhibits brain function would be rather silly. Once the cat was ready, a probe to detect electrical was placed in close proximity to the moggies exposed brain. The cat was then poked and prodded in various places, to see where the neural activity was occurring. As all this was going on the cats would drool and stare at you with absolute hatred. When we say cats are cruel to their prey, I have always felt, since this experience, that people really haven't got a clue what the meaning of the word is. After I'd been working for a week at the place, I started to have nightmares. I asked one of the researchers what the purpose of the experiments were. I was rather hoping to find out that it was to save humanity. The answer shocked me "I'm working on my doctorate". I then asked whether there was any practical use for the work. The answer was equally shocking "I am sure that once the work is completed plenty of studies will refer to it".  I realised that all of the purpose of the suffering of the poor moggies was highly speculative and unlike the liver fluke project, wasn't for a specific project. When the moggies had been prodded for a few hours, I would take the cats on their final journey to the incinerator. Sometimes the brown bags would twitch as we went down, as they hadn't been properly euthenised as they went (Ether was used). It was horrible.  I did the job for a couple of weeks and then quit.

I realised that the last thing I would ever want to do is work in anything that involved cruelty to animals. Whenever I heard vivisectionists and anti vivisectionists argue, I get really irritated. Both sides misrepresent the arguments. Those working on animals use the vital work of the scientists working on projects such as the liver fluke project to justify everything, from the speculative mapping of moggies brains, to cosmetics product development and research by tobacco companies to make tobacco products less harmful. The anti's ignore the fact that if your children have an incurable illness, any sane parent will sanction anything to save them. My view is that if a clear benefit can be demonstrated to the planet, then I would support experimentation, but if it is speculative or simply so people's lips can look more luscious, it can never be justified. 

For years after I worked at the NIMR, I could not walk past the place. On the odd occasion when I had to, if I smelled the incinerators burning the dead animals, I'd feel physically sick. When my children went to the adjacent St Vincents school, I'd often smell it and eventually got over the sense of panic. When I realised that Barratts were demolishing the building I was extremely happy, I hated the site of it and was pleased that this death camp for animals was going. Unlike many doe eyed locals, it was a place of disgust for me. 

But as the flats have gone up, I no longer feel quite the same. As I was walking to the Adam and Eve last week, a lorry emerged from the site and honked its horn. For some reason, this induced a mild panic attack (possibly caused by being unexpectedly startled on a nice walk). The site of the vehicle, caked in mud and aggressively driving down the Ridgeway seemed to me to exclaim that the site is a place of extremely bad karma. In China, buildings are valued for their Feng Shui (Of course,  for us westeners,  this is a purely personal thing) Unless the buyers are people who believe animals have spirits and the ghosts of ten thousand dead moggies will be haunting them, I doubt too many people will change their plans as a result of this blog. That isn't really the point I wanted to make at all. You may wonder what the point was?

Well I really wanted to talk about the way we do brownfield developments. I was out with friends at Granary Square on Saturday night. The whole area has been transformed into an excellent, people friendly space. If I was going to take anyone to show how urban regenertion can work, I'd take them to the St Pancras/Kings Cross area (preferably in a Tardis to show them the place in the 1980's as well). The thing is that the space is people friendly. I've looked long and hard at the plans Barratts have submitted for the site, which were approved by the Mayor of London. The site is almost unique in London. It is more or less equidistant from both Mill Hill East and Mill Hill Broadway stations, but both have extremely steep hills. It is perhaps the least cycle accessible site in London. It is extraordinarily well served for schools, although the Primary Schools of St Vincents RC and St Pauls CofE both have a faith requirement, Belmont is a fee paying prep school and Mill Hill is a fee paying public school. There are no shops within an easy walk with shopping (apart from Finchley Nurseries who sell some organic fruit and veg). In short, unless you are an Olympic standard cyclist, who's family are religious or loaded, and buy all your food from Ocado (other online services are available), you are going to be spending a lot of time in your car. The Ridgeway is already  gridlocked with the schools at opening/closing time and the 240 bus is packed. 

The point is that this is not a people friendly site for the vast majority of those who need a home in the Borough. Another similar site, completely unsuitable for families is currently under consideration by the Mayor for the Pentavia retail park, another brownfield site. In the case of Pentavia, again the access is appalling, there are no local primary schools reasonably accessible by foot, appalling road connections, issues with pollution and few local facilities for families. 

When the London County Council built the Watling Estate, they put a tube line in, libraries, schools, doctors surgeries, shops and parks. The homes had gardens and grassy areas for children to play. There even used to be a general hospital nearby. I am all for brownfield site developments, but whenever you read about such projects in Barnet, you never read about how they will be great places for families to live in. It is simply a numbers game. I live in Millway, NW7. I have a garden, I can walk to the bus and train station in five minutes, I can buy a pint of milk or a loaf or bread in the Broadway. Our nearest primary and secondary schools are within easy walking distance. The park is not much further, the doctors surgery and the dentists are around the corner. I don't think any of those things should be unusual for a family living in London. Whilst new build flats that will have children may not have gardens but they should have safe, communal play areas. 

So whilst being hounded by the ghosts of ten thousand dead moggies may be a major disincentive to me personally, the rational reason why I think these are bad developments is that they don't serve the people of our Borough. We need good quality homes for families, with good air quality, schools, shops and services within walking distance and should be designed with a view to building a sense of community. When we talk about social housing, we seem to forget what the word social means. According to the Oxford Online dictionary, it means " relating to activities in which you meet and spend time with other people and that happen during the time when you are not working". In Barnet, it seems to me that the current concept of social housing design is to keep people stuck in tiny flats miles from anything where they might interact with anyone else. The Barratts site states that there is a gym and a concierge services, this doesn't sound to me like a scheme attracting families with children, who should be the first priority in any scheme. I note with interest that the affordable housing section is located on and around the part of the  site of the old incinerator, that I've had so many nightmares about. Why does that not surprise me?

To summarise what I am trying to say, I am all for brownfield developments to fix our housing crisis, but they should be addressing the people who the crisis is affecting worst,ie  families requiring social housing. Clearly a site such as the NIMR couldn't simply be left to rot, the issues with access would not prevent a development, but the whole scheme should have been considered as a part of the Millbrook Park, IBSA development. Each of these massive building projects have been viewed as totally different proposals, but each affects the same schools, bus routes, dental surgeries and roads.

When a proposal is referred to the Mayor of London, currently the scope of the proposal is not widened to review other local schemes. This is crazy and it explains why these schemes are overloading local services. A referral to the Mayor should automatically mean a widening of the scope of the enquiry and all local schemes of note and transport infrastructure issues should be included. With this scheme, Millbrook Park and the IBSA, there will be nearly five thousand more homes in the area than there were in 2005. That is more homes than the Watling Estate. All of that to be served by Mill Hill East, the only single track section of any deep tube line, which has been cut to an off peak shuttle service. It is madness. If you don't agree, just walk down the Ridgeway from Hammers Lane to Bittacy Hill when the schools are opening and tell me I'm wrong. And that is before the buildings have gone up. 

So to sum up. The Mayor of London should look at more than his housing targets. He should be a champion for the people who will be living in the new homes. He should make sure that the children growing up on the site have all the facilities needed to have a great childhood and for parents to build the social network of friends and neighbours to support them.  In short, a large development should provide and environment in which people have a good quality of life. 

I finish with a video I made last year with my band The False Dots, recording for posterity the destruction of the NIMR building, if you are missing the gross monstrosity. Enjoy