Research council unveils relocation and rebuilding plans

The Medical Research Council is consulting on plans to move a large proportion of its research activity to Cambridge, writes Anna Fazackerley.

The council has published a long-term investment strategy for its four main research sites. This includes a plan to move its largest institute, the National Institute for Medical Research, to the Addenbrooke's campus in Cambridge, and proposals for a new building on the same site to update its Laboratory of Molecular Biology.

The NIMR, which has an annual budget of £ million, is currently based in Mill Hill in London. The council had agreed that the NIMR should maintain investment in the institute's key areas of science, which include influenza, but said that the institute needed to be relocated to a university medical school site.

Stephen Davies, director of information and planning at the Addenbrooke's National Health Service trust told The THES: "We see a continuing and strengthened MRC presence as a major element in our '2020 vision' for the development of the campus as a centre for health care, research and education on an international scale."

Negotiations have already begun with developers, in consultation with the NHS trust and the university.