A local residents’ association is exploring a high court challenge to a major £42m extension to the Royal Free Hospital, NW3.
The hospital had its Hopkins Architects-designed plans for a 92,000 sq ft, seven-storey facility approved by Camden council at a second planning hearing
last week.
The Pears Building facility would see new laboratory and research space, a patient hotel, charity offices and a replacement car park built on a green space adjacent to the main building.
It would become home to the expanded University College London Institute of Immunity and Transplantation.
It was approved in February, but Hampstead Green Neighbourhood Group issued a pre-action protocol letter.
The council then appointed a planning barrister to review the project, who deemed the plans to be “vulnerable” to judicial review, prompting the second hearing.
The opposition group’s David Kitchen said: “Everybody is in favour of immunology research, but we feel the decision made was not adequately justified, and now they have hastily convened a resit of the planning hearing, where we were not allowed to give any representation. We are now reviewing whether to move towards judicial review and also reviewing the procedure the council went through.”
The review would focus on the harm to the setting of the Grade I listed St Stephen’s Church and on accusations of inadequate impact assessments.
