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

City councillors rejected the university’s £150m scheme to transform its Gipsy Lane site in September last year, supporting residents who had campaigned against the height and scale of buildings.

But officers say the new plans for a £132m library and teaching building have dealt with the reasons for refusal.

The council’s north east area committee is recommended to back the scheme on Tuesday, despite continuing opposition from residents.

In a bid to address residents’ objections about the scale of the new library, the university has reduced the section of the building facing Headington Hill to four storeys above ground.

Its revised plan has also meant enlarging the basement library to compensate for the loss of height.

But nearby residents say the buildings are still too high.

Susan Lake, chairman of the Headington Hill Residents’ Association, said: “We believe the changes that have been made are insignificant. 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.”

Following the meeting of the north east area committee, the plans will be considered by the strategic development control committee on February 24.

Some campaigners are calling on the council to replace Roy Darke, who will chair both meetings, on the grounds of his past connections with the university.

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

They wrote: “We call on the city council to ensure he does not chair meetings that concern the Brookes planning application or, indeed, all issues relation to student accommodation and Brookes.”

Mr Darke, the Labour city councillor for Headington Hill and Northway, said: “I took voluntary redundancy from Brookes in 2003.

“I have had no connection with Brookes for many years.”

Jeremy Thomas, the council’s head of law and governance, said one complaint involving Mr Darke had been received and investigated but no breach of the council’s code had taken place.