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THE CLINICAL Research Centre in Harrow, Middlesex, is to close, probably
at the end of 1994. Dai Rees, the secretary of the Medical Research Council,
told a meeting at the centre that some, but not all, of the research groups
currently based at the CRC will move to the Royal Postgraduate Medical School
at Hammersmith in West London. Many researchers would have to move elsewhere
or take early retirement, the assembled staff heard.

Some of those present reported Rees as saying that researchers could
not expect to be relocated to the ‘golden triangle’ of Oxford, Cambridge
and London. They would be dispersed around Britain; in particular, the council
would look favourably on moves to Scotland.

According to one researcher at the centre, people were shocked and disturbed
by the news. ‘There was slightly hysterical laughter at some of the most
serious points,’ he said. Another said the announcement came as ‘quite a
bombshell’. It was very clearly stated, he added, that nothing and no one
associated with the CRC would remain there after it closed.

The statement on the fate of the centre concludes four years of uncertainty
for staff working there. After accepting the conclusions of the Stoker report
on the centre’s future in 1986, the council decided to plan for a new national
centre for clinical research at Hammersmith.

Last year, the council calculated that such a move would cost almost
Pounds sterling 100 million. More recently, after the Advisory Board for
the Research Councils asked the MRC to scale down its proposals, the council
reduced the figure for the first phase of the development to Pounds sterling
50 million and announced that the new centre would go ahead.

David Evered, second secretary at the MRC, said he could not comment
on reports that the council will now have about Pounds sterling 15 million
with which to expand facilities in West London. But the amount available
would be ‘significantly less’ than the figure of about Pounds sterling 50
million which the council had originally planned for, he said.

Evered said that a complex planning process would now begin. He said
that the council is ‘hoping to transfer a significant proportion of staff’
from the CRC to Hammersmith, although the size of that group is undecided.
In addition, Evered said, the council expects to be able to assemble teams
‘of a sensible size’ and then seek ‘hosts’ for them – universities where
they would fit in well. And he added that Rees’s comments about relocation
outside the ‘golden triangle’ were making the point that all options are
open.

According to some researchers working at the CRC, scientists working
on molecular genetics and molecular biology are likely to be among those
moved to Hammersmith. The Human Genome Resource Centre, which the council
plans to set up ‘as soon as possible’, Evered said, would probably be based
at Harrow to begin with, before moving to Hammersmith. However, this would
depend on how quickly the centre is established, he said. The fate of the
building at Northwick Park in Harrow that currently houses the CRC is unknown.
The MRC leases it from the Department of Health. One possibility is that
Northwick Park Hospital, which has put in a bid to become self-governing,
as proposed in the recent White Paper on the NHS, could take the building
over.