Campaigners are calling for a redesign of Marriotts Close, the Witney town centre development due to start going up in early 2007.

Action to Improve Marriotts Close (Aim) believes the shopping, restaurant, cinema and housing complex should contain at least one acre of open green space or risk damaging the character of the town.

Group coordinator Geoffrey Nutt, of Oakfield Place, Witney, said: "For 100 years that site has been an area for recreation.

"We want this seven or eight-acre site to include one acre of open space. We're in danger of killing the goose that laid the golden egg by building on every piece of land in Witney."

Geoff Bonner, chief executive of West Oxfordshire District Council which owns the site, said there was a lot of other green space in the town and the action group was retreading old ground.

He added: "The council could change its mind, but we've gone a long way down the road and I think the sense in the town is people would like to get on with it rather than going back over ground we've already covered."