The £150m scheme to redevelop Oxford Brookes University’s main Headington campus looks set to be given the go-ahead by Oxford City Council.

Officers will recommend that plans to create a new gateway to the city should be approved, when they go before councillors on Tuesday.

But residents opposing the scheme reacted angrily, claiming it was being “rushed through” in the August holiday period, when many people directly affected were away.

They have won the backing of local councillor Nuala Young who has asked for the application to be put back until September.

The proposals by Brookes to redevelop its Gipsy Lane campus is one of the biggest schemes to go to the city council for decades. It would see about a third of the Gipsy Lane site redeveloped, with a new entrance and public square facing out to Headington Road.

The scheme’s centrepiece, a student centre containing a library, lecture theatre and teaching space, has been bitterly opposed by residents, who complained about its height and “the massing” of buildings on the site.

But an officers’ report to next week’s north east area committee and the city’s strategic development control committee, which meets on August 26, concludes that the scheme’s benefits will outweigh any adverse local impact.

The report concludes: “There can be little doubt that much of the teaching and social accommodation available to Brookes falls well short of the standards required of a major longstanding academic institution of national and intern- ational reputation, and which is also a major local employer. The current proposals aim to redress these deficiencies in line with the university’s masterplan.”

Harry Edwards, of Highfield Residents’ Association said: “To take a decision of such importance in the middle of the holiday season when many local people and councillors will be away would be highly undemocratic and would undermine confidence in both the area committees and the planning system itself.”

“It would prevent proper scrutiny of the issue and would suggest, however unfairly, a desire to avoid community debate.”

In her letter to planners, Ms Young says: “We had understood that the application would be put in September.”

The officers’ report recognised that the size of the student centre building would “impact on neighbouring residential properties” but says large buildings have existed on the site for 50 years. It says tree planting could mitigate problems, with lights switched off at 10pm in buildings beyond the second floor to reduce light pollution. It adds that an 11pm closure during weekdays and at midnight at weekends could be made a condition of the planning permission.

Susan Lake, of the Headington Hill residents’ group, said: “City planners have sprung a silly-season fast report on us. It recommends acceptance in terms as mediocre and uncritical as the gross building itself. It reads as if dictated by a stand-up comedian or Brookes, who expect all ‘partners’ to pass their economic ambitions while hundreds of objecting citizens are distracted in August.”

An email sent to Mrs Lake from the council’s head of city development, Michael Crofton Briggs, made clear a postponement was unlikely. It reads: “It is not possible to put the planning system on hold to suit all holiday months.”