THE city council is seeking legal advice to ensure work is done to The Priory, the listed building near the Kassam Stadium.

The authority said it is looking for ‘specialist legal advice on the best way forward’ to make sure Firoka, which is responsible for the Grade II* listed building, completes any surveys and necessary work.

Firoka is the company run by former Oxford United owner Firoz Kassam. It also owns the Kassam Stadium and other leisure sites off Grenoble Road.

The council said a notice ordering work was done to the building within three months from May 2018 was not complied with. No action has been taken since then.

The Priory was previously used as a pub but it closed in June 2013 and has been vacant since. Firoka has said it is not viable to run as a pub.

The building is owned by the city council but is on a 99-year full repairing lease. That runs until January 2062 and requires its tenant to keep it in good repair.

Firoka took on the lease from Mill House Inns, which used to run it, in January 2000.

The company was told it must carry out a survey – and work if necessary – after it got the go-ahead for the Hampton by Hilton hotel in 2005.

A breach of condition notice sent by the city council to Firoka in May 2018 was obtained through the freedom of information act.

It tells Firoka: “The required further survey of the external condition of The Priory setting out a written scheme for the repairs of the building has not been submitted to and approved by the council.

“Furthermore, the repairs to the building have not been carried out within six months of the date of this permission.”

It continues: “This has allowed the further deterioration of an important designated heritage asset, increasingly the vulnerability of the building and putting it further at risk.”

The building was originally a mid-14th century monastery. That was built on the site of a nunnery founded there in 1110.

Other notices, like that from May 2018, have been sent by the council but no work completed.

In the papers sent to Firoka in May 2018, the council stated magistrates could fine the company up to £2,500 ‘for a first offence and any subsequent offence’.

Back in June 2014, the city council employed civil engineers to undertake a survey of the building.

The Morton Partnership found The Priory was structurally sound and that that only minimal repairs were needed.

It told the council that work would cost about £21,000 to complete at that time.

Gillian Argyle, of Oxford Civic Society, said the group remained ‘extremely concerned’ over what was happening to the ‘precious building’.

In September 2015, Firoka asked the city council to vary planning permission and to give it an extra six months to undertake repairs.

That was allowed in April 2016 – but Firoka was told it would need to carry out a new survey.

But then in March 2018, Firoka asked to remove that planning condition altogether.

It argued the repairs were outside the hotel scheme and that it was ‘unreasonable’ to expect the company to pay for the work.

The council disagreed and has kept the conditions to repair it in the planning permission for the hotel.

It formally dismissed Firoka’s application to avoid the repairs in May 2018.

Firoka was approached to comment.