ANOTHER bid to build affordable homes on playing fields in Oxford looks set to be turned down.

Developers want to build 83 flats for key workers on land off William Morris Close in Temple Cowley.

Nearly 60 residents have objected to the project, with one saying she worried the volume of new residents could create a ‘ghetto’.

Oxford City Council has marked the boarded-up site as open space and said developers have failed to make clear why the 1.24 hectares have been exhausted as recreation land.

Of the 59 objectors, Briony Enser, who lives in Turner Close, said: "If approved, this application would have several detrimental effects and no benefits.

"The suggested number of dwellings is out of all proportion with the space – 83 is a truly shocking number. It would create a cramped ghetto."

The playing fields were used by the Lord Nuffield Club, which closed in 2009, and were bought by Cantay Estates in 2012.

Of the proposed 83 flats, 73 would be lived in by tenants from a council-approved list of key workers, including social workers, teachers and nurses.

They would pay rent 23 per cent below the market price.

The other 10 would be rented out at half the rental market price.

They would all be one, two and three-bedroom units.

But some residents said they were concerned too few parking spaces would be provided in an area they said is already busy at peak times.

Kay Wang, who lives on Beresford Place, said: “The plan to create only 16 parking spaces for this number of dwellings is quite frankly nonsensical and will inevitably result in cars being parked in dangerous and inconvenient locations in the surrounding roads.

“This would generate significant and unacceptable problems with access, traffic and parking in these roads, which are already very narrow and extremely congested."

This application would be the latest in a series for the site – seven of which have been rejected by the city council since March 2013.

Developer Patrick McDonald, who as founder of consultancy Openwell Oxford is involved with the project, said: “We are very disappointed that the [council planning officers] have made the decision they have.

“If someone has a better idea of what to do with the land, pray tell. But nobody has.

"There is this naïve idea that it will be open space.”

As part of the application, 20 per cent of the site would remain open land. That would include an outdoor gym.

The council has said the mix of homes ‘would not create a mixed and balanced development’ and that ‘inadequacies in indicative layout, the lack of cycle parking and waste storage facilities’ fail to show how 83 homes could be built on the site.

Other criticisms included that developers had failed to show how it would not result in ‘unacceptable impacts’ to air quality and biodiversity.

A decision on the planning application will be made by the east area planning committee at a meeting at Oxford Town Hall on Wednesday.