Supplementary evidence from Dr Tony Holder,
representative of NIMR staff, following the evidence session on
13 December 2006
In response to Q97, I offered to provide further
information on the "Mill Hill Step Change Option" that
was prepared by Institute management in 2004. The £35 million
would provide refurbishment and new construction works consisting
of accelerated refurbishment of the buildings, new facilities
for imaging, emerging infections and medicinal chemistry and a
new outreach and conference centre. The revision of this document
with current cost estimates is in progress and I will forward
it to you when it is available.
I would also like to comment on the evidence
provided by Professor Blakemore in the second panel of the session,
to provide some clarification to the Committee:
In response to this question it was stated that
"NIMR is the last of the MRC's institutes or units which
is not co-located with [a] university".
In fact the MRC facilities at Harwell are also
not co-located with any university.
It was stated that "The process has involved
the formal investment strategy, the Task Force and the whole of
the Council of the MRC working over three or four years maintaining
a consistent and unanimous view. The most unanimous feature being
that the Mill Hill site is simply inappropriate in the long run
to deliver the vision of the science".
The mission of the Task Force was to examine
the future of NIMR and its location. The Task Force should have
had no preconceived view on the location and it did not make the
stated conclusion.
In response to Mr Afriyie regarding limiting
the budgeting to two years it was stated "... this is a misconception
generated within the institute."
In fact this "misconception" arose
from a statement in a letter dated 24 February 2006, from the
MRC CEO to the then director and seen by senior staff: "...
Council made no decisions about the budget allocation from April
2008, which will be decided in the context of the next Director's
plans". The misconception was further reinforced verbally
by the MRC CEO at a meeting at Mill Hill with senior staff in
October 2006.
January 2007
|
