PLANNING chiefs could soften their position on key worker housing schemes, in a move that would help Oxford University build thousands of homes for staff.

Existing rules require half of all homes in developments to be 'affordable' – and mostly socially rented – but the university says this stifles staff housing schemes.

It wants to build 4,000 homes on its own land and that of various colleges over the next 10 years but has warned this would not be viable under current policies.

This is because key worker housing must be delivered in addition to affordable housing.

However, senior figures at Oxford City Council have now told The Oxford Times they are willing to be 'flexible'.

It comes as the local authority reviews its Local Plan, the blueprint for development, with formal proposals due this summer.

Oxford University has been lobbying the city council for months to change its policies, along with Oxford Brookes University and Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

Prof William James, Oxford University's pro vice-chancellor for planning, said: "In our view, the way in which affordable housing rules are operating has been, over the last few years, not conducive to the generation of significant numbers of affordable housing units.

"We are urging the city council to think very carefully about that and have been doing work with partners who also have ambitions to bring forward proposals for accommodation on land that would otherwise not come forward."

He said the university and colleges were hoping to build 2,000 affordable rented homes for employees in Oxford, including 600 as part of the proposed redevelopment of Osney Mead industrial estate and around 250 homes at Diamond Place, in Summertown. A further 2,000 would be built for postgraduate students.

Prof James added: "Our city centre developments would be 100 per cent key worker housing, but that would be dependent on the affordable housing rules changing.

"If they are applied in the rigid way they have been in the past, then these schemes will simply not be viable."

Oxford Brookes University is also planning to expand its accommodation by about 2,500 rooms over the next 10 years, with about 1,500 built in the first five.

This will largely involve building more on existing sites within easy reach of its Headington campus, as well as near or at its Harcourt Hill campus in the long term.

Paul Large, director of infrastructure investment, said yesterday: "We cannot yet look at key worker housing in the way that the other university is because we do not have access to the land and capital required, although it is something we want to do.

"But, to be frank, under the current planning rules it would be difficult to make such a scheme viable. We are supportive of the suggestions Oxford University has made."

When asked about Oxford University's suggestion of housing schemes exclusively for its staff, Alex Hollingsworth, the city council's executive board member for planning, urged it to come forward with detailed plans.

He told The Oxford Times: "At the moment [such a scheme] would technically be in breach of our policies, as they stand today.

"But these are not hard and fast rules. All planning decisions require you to weigh up policies that conflict with each other and it's perfectly possible for us to have a discussion – we are having those discussions are part of the Local Plan review process."

He added: "We see two key principles. The first is it must meet the needs of a cross-section of key workers and the second is it needs to remain affordable in perpetuity.

"Clearly you want to give developers a degree of certainty as well as flexibility, but our message is that nothing has prevented the university or any other landowner coming forward with a proposal like this.

"We will look at everything on its own merits and flexibility exists within the current policies.

"No such proposal has ever come forward, but we have been asking."