CONTROVERSIAL Oxford University student flats have been given a green new look.

Campaigners had fought for the top storey to be taken off the Castle Mill flats off Roger Dudman Way but a four-year fight finished in 2016 when the university chose a £6m screening option instead.

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Now five ‘living walls’ have been installed across the site, accompanied by a sophisticated automatic watering system that graduate accommodation and university parks staff are being trained to use.

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The Oxford University graduate accommodation website said: “The improvements are designed to reduce the buildings’ visual impact on the local environment and to improve building performance; they include steps such as repainting walls, replacing cladding and windows, and landscaping, for example planting large numbers of mature trees around the site.”

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City councillor Susanna Pressel said: “The University should never have designed these enormous buildings, which spoil the view from Port Meadow and Jericho. They should certainly never have been given planning permission.

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"Now at last they are doing something to reduce the damage they have caused.

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"Some of the bright white walls have been covered with luxuriant plants, which will help to make them less of an eyesore.”