A NEW homeless centre, a key part of the city council’s strategy to tackle the problem, will go for official approval this week – but the county council is opposed.

The city council wants to build a 37-bedroom shelter and pay for a company to run it on what is currently unused ground in Rymers Lane, Cowley.

It wants the building to be used by homeless people who will be given the opportunity to turn their lives around by working with experts, once the building is completed by 2019.

But residents, Oxfordshire County Council and a county councillor have all said they have worries about the viability of the plan.

The county council’s highways department said although the development is meant to be car-free, it worries that a lack of off-street parking would mean staff, visitors and residents clog up side streets by parking on them.

Councillor John Sanders, who represents Cowley on the county council, agreed.

He said staff would be expected to walk two kilometres to work, but that it would be ‘more realistic’ to assume they would park on Rymers Lane, Clive Road and Campbell Road nearby, ‘adding to the existing problems’.

The council received 14 comments in support and objecting to the scheme.

Summarising them, the council said supporters said it was a ‘fantastic proposal’ – but that there were too few beds to support the homeless across Oxford.

Others said they were in favour of the complex because it would be built ‘in an area where there are jobs available and access to support services’.

Opponents said the site was inappropriate and that there would be an adverse effect on private, traffic and parking. Others said they worried it would increase anti-social behaviour in the area and that a brothel had recently been closed down nearby.

In May 2017, city councillors gave the go-ahead for a 39-bedroom student complex on the site. But Oxford-based developers Cantay Estates Ltd plan to sell the building to A2 Dominion, which will run it on behalf of the city council.

The application will be decided at the East Area planning committee at Oxford Town Hall on Wednesday.

To see the plan, visit the city council’s website.