Whitehall split over Hinxton bid

A row has broken out between the Department of Trade and Industry and the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions over the recent rejection of the Wellcome Trust's planning application for a Pounds 100 million expansion of its human genome research campus at Hinxton, Cambridge.

An informed Whitehall source said the DTI, which has been championing the biotechnology industry, had strongly backed Wellcome's application and impressed upon the environment department its importance for the sector.

He said: "Unfortunately the (DETR) took the view that planning regulations were its responsibility alone and turned Wellcome's bid down. It could be seen as turf wars but it is a setback for the government's push for 'joined-up thinking' across Whitehall."

DTI officials have expressed their dismay to the DETR. It is understood the Cabinet Office has also taken a dim view of the decision. The source added: "It is no wonder business gets pissed off when one department sends out one signal and another a totally different one."

The importance of the fast-growing biotechnology industry to the United Kingdom was highlighted by a recent study of the prospects for the sector carried out by science minister Lord Sainsbury.

The report estimates the worldwide market for biotechnology products will reach Pounds 70 billion by 2000 with sales in the UK alone topping Pounds 9 billion.

The report warned, however, that planning restrictions can be a "significant barrier" to the development of hotspots or "clusters" of biotechnology firms, pointing to Cambridge, Oxford and London as being particularly vulnerable to the problem.

The Wellcome Trust's board of governors met last week to discuss the rejection of the planning application. The board expressed its "disappointment" and said the trust would not appeal the decision against it by John Prescott, secretary of state for the environment, transport and the regions.

Since the rejection, the trust has received "many approaches" from overseas and from within the UK offering alternative sites for the investment, which could generate 1,000 jobs.

Michael Dexter, director of the trust, said the appraisal of options would include an assessment of other investment possibilities at its Cambridge campus.

The DETR had left the door open for a new bid.

Sir Richard Sykes, in his presidential address to the British Association's Festival of Science, criticised the government's rejection of the Hinxton planning bid. He said: "A chance to create the infrastructure for exploiting our leading edge science may have been missed."

He said the government's vision of a "genome fen" centre of excellence in Cambridgeshire was inconsistent with its refusal to fully approve the application.