A HOUSING block for the elderly in Old Marston could be bulldozed and replaced with a modern complex as part of Oxford City Council’s push for more social housing.

Bradlands House in Mill Lane is expected to be demolished next January to make way for a new 45-flat block.

Resident Malcolm Everton, 66, was on the panel of residents which helped draw up the scheme, and is looking forward to moving into the new building.

He said: “It is a great thing that the city council is replacing this block.

“It will give a better quality of life to the next generation of wrinklies like me.

“The city council has been absolutely brilliant about this and it has bent over backwards to help us.

“Moving is going to cause some amount of distress, but this place is falling down.

“The council was going to be forced to do something eventually and it is trying to do it as seamlessly as possible.”

While the work goes ahead, some of the residents of Bradlands will be moved across the road into Cumberlege House – another sheltered housing block – which will also be demolished, but the council do not know when.

Later in the process council officers will review their options and decide what to do with Cumberlege House.

The 15 residents of Cumberlege House will then be moved to the new Bradlands block, which will have an extra storey to accommodate them.

Some residents have already been moved out of Bradlands to other city council sheltered housing with about 15 people remaining who will have left the building by October.

Work at the 40-year-old block is part of the city council’s scheme to build 112 new council homes in the city by 2015.

Louisa Dean, a spokesman for the city council, said: “If planning permission is approved, the scheme will provide high quality, modern, energy efficient accommodation for the council’s elderly tenants in Marston.

“Residents have been consulted and will be moved to other locations temporarily.

“They will have the opportunity to move back to the new block should they so wish.”

She added that it would be inappropriate to say how much would be spent on the development before the council had planning permission.

A committee of city councillors will decide whether to go ahead with the demolition of Bradlands House, but a date has not yet been set.