Inhabitants of houses built for workers in Wolvercote have been told they have no right to buy their freeholds because their landlord is a charity: Oxford University. Oxford University Press (OUP) built the 43 houses and flats in Webb's Close, and 74 in Jordan Hill, in the 1950s and 1960s for workers at its old Wolvercote Paper Mill, where paper had been produced for about 300 years - and where the university is now planning a new £40m housing development.

Bob Knight, a retired officer of the Graphical Paper and Media Union (GPMU), and now spokesman for the Webb's Close Residents Association, said: "The leases run out in 2042 at Webb's Close and in 2029 at Jordan's Hill.

"We cannot buy the houses from Oxford University Press because apparently it is a part of Oxford University - which counts as a charity, even though it has no charity number and is not registered with the Charity Commission."

Jordan Hill Residents' Association spokesman Angela Goff, said: "Our only hope now seems to be that changes in the pipeline in charity law may help us by putting us in the same position as nearly all other lease holders in the country."

She added : "I think there are double standards at work here. It seems that OUP is a profit-making organisation when it suits it, and part of a charity at other times."

Like many residents, she is in a race with the grim reaper. She said: "I am 65 now and the lease runs out in 2029. I wonder what I'll do when I am 86 and the lease runs out."

The residents took advice from leading London right-to-buy lawyer, Simon Serota, who in 2006 won a case for tenants of the Brick Farm estate in Richmond, Surrey, who rented from a charitable housing trust.

At first he told them that they did have the right, under the Government's complicated legislation - but then changed his mind and said that they did not.

He told The Oxford Times: "If the freehold ultimately belongs to a charity, tenants do not have the right to buy. Oxford University Press and Oxford University are the same legal entity.

"And there is no doubt that the university, which owns the land, is a charity."

Many of the residents have already exercised their right to buy their leases from Cherwell Housing Society, to whom OUP had assigned them in 1985.

However, they ran into difficulties when it came to buying the freeholds.

Only the residents of the 25 houses - as opposed to flats - in Webbs Close, and the 58 houses in Jordan Hill, ever had any hope of acquiring the freeholds.

Residents of the flats were ruled out under a different section of the Leasehold Reform Housing and Urban Development Act 1993.

A spokesman for the university said: "The university has been approached regularly over the past 25 years about allowing tenants to purchase the freehold, but has consistently maintained the policy that it does not wish to dispose of its freehold in these sites. While the university can appreciate the tenants' desire to purchase the freeholds, we have a long-term responsibility as stewards of this land, which was acquired by our predecessors and which we should endeavour to pass on to our successors."