A BOTLEY café owner fighting to keep his business running said he might be forced to close after his expansion plans were turned down by councillors.

In a bid to keep his business afloat Trevor Bennett was hoping to transform the Organic Deli Café and Wholefood Store at Botley Road into a restaurant that would serve cooked food.

Owner Trevor Bennett said the café’s sales had crashed by 56 per cent since the nearby Waitrose opened its doors in October 2015.

The father-of-two said: “We have had to stop selling all of our organic fruit, veg and breads because we couldn’t match the competition from Waitrose.

“I’ve got a family to support as well as 11 members of staff to think about and I hoped by changing the café into more of a restaurant we would be able to save the business.

“I’m not some owner who lives in their house in Boars Hill and has no idea or interest in their business.

“I’m here every day trying to make sure it works.”

The father-of-two said that when they opened the café in February 2015, they were not aware of a supermarket with a café opening down the road.

And now Oxford City Council has thrown out his plans to change his business model to stay afloat.

He added: “This decision to change the cafe was a choice I had to make to make sure the business kept going.

“There is a demand for a place where people can come in and have a cooked breakfast down Botley Road.

“People said in their objections that the change would remove a business but there is still a vacant unit where Eggs Eggsetera used to be.

“No one has moved in because there is nothing else you can do, we’ve already got a pharmacy, barbers, supermarket and bike shop and this application is going to take the shop away it is just having that extra bit."

Oxford city councillor Susanna Pressel, meanwhile, said that five letters of objection had been received and residents were 'relieved' it had been blocked.

She said: "Although the present owner is well-regarded, they were afraid that a future owner might decide to run a high-volume take-away café, which would be likely to create a lot of noise, smells, waste, litter and traffic.

"There’s no spare parking nearby, so extra traffic at this very busy bit of Botley Road would be a nightmare.

"Also I’m told that the premises have no amenity space, so there would be nowhere to put extra wheelie bins.”

In outlining its reasons for refusing the change of use Oxford City Council said that there was no viability evidence for the plan, not enough information on the equipment that would be used in the development and no flood risk assessment included.

Mr Bennett added: “We are going to suffer financially from this. It was a big shock when we got the response back from the council.

“We had only ever had positive responses from people about the plan, from the customers in the store and then on social media and then at the eleventh hour we had a problem.

“We are an organic deli and we are sustainable and there is nothing we do that doesn’t consider the environment."

Mr Bennett said he will appeal the council's decision.