PLANNING officers say Oxford Brookes has done enough to satisfy city council objections to the university’s plans to redevelop its Headington campus.

Oxford city councillors controversially rejected the university’s £150m scheme to transform its Gipsy Lane site in September, supporting local residents who had campaigned against the height and scale of buildings. But officers say Brookes’s new plans for a £132m library and teaching building have dealt with the reasons for refusal.

And the council’s north east area committee is recommended to give the scheme its backing when it meets on Tuesday, despite continuing opposition from the university’s closest neighbours.

The officers’ report says: “The university has addressed issues which gave rise to the refusal of similar proposals in 2009, by reducing the height and bulk of buildings, adjusting their location and improving their relationship to neighbouring residential properties and the Headington Hill Conservation Area.”

The decision by councillors to ignore their officers’ recommendation last year added more than £1m to the cost of the redevelopment, with Brookes having to re-think the £150m scheme.

In a bid to address residents’ objections about the scale of the proposed landmark library building, the university has reduced the section of the building facing Headington Hill to four storeys above ground. The revised plan has also meant enlarging the basement library to compensate for the loss of height.

After going before the north east area committee, it will be considered by the strategic development control committee on February 24.

But residents, who ran a determined campaign of opposition, say the buildings are still too high. And some have called on the city council to replace the councillor who will chair both crucial meetings, on the grounds of his past connections with the university.

Brookes’s original plan to replace ageing buildings was approved by the city council’s strategic development control committee last summer. But it was later called in to the full council and was rejected.

Susan Lake, chairman of the Headington Hill Residents’ Association, warned: “We believe the changes made to the plan are insignificant.

“We feel Brookes should have gone back to the drawing board and come up with a different design on a different footprint, with the buildings spread out and lowered.”

Residents this week aimed their fire at Roy Darke, who they say should not be allowed to chair either the area committee or strategic development committee.

They set out their objections to Mr Darke in a letter to The Oxford Times, complaining he had been a former senior employee at Brookes.

Among those to sign it were David Barton, chairman of the Iffley Road Residents’ Association, and Sietske Boeles, of the Friends of Warneford Meadow.

But Mr Darke, councillor for Headington Hill and Northway, said: “I took voluntary redundancy from Brookes in 2003. I have had no connection with Brookes for years.”

Jeremy Thomas, head of law and governance at the city council, said one complaint involving Mr Darke had been received and investigated and no breach of the council’s code had taken place. However, he added that no complaint had been received based on Mr Darke’s previous employment.

He said: “It is frankly ridiculous for the signatories to the letter to ‘call on’ the council to do something when they are not prepared to make a complaint.”