SLEEPING residents claim they have been abruptly woken in the middle of the night by drilling at the Westgate building site.

But the developer behind the multi-million pound project has denied the noise was its fault, with Oxford City Council now investigating the cause of the disturbance.

Janice Taphouse, who lives in Turn Again Lane, said her 34-year-old son Kevin was kept awake by the noise for most of last Thursday night.

The 58-year-old said: “He was awake all night. I don’t know why it’s happening.”

Mr Taphouse later complained to the city council about the noise.

Another resident, who only wanted to be named as Flavia, said she was concerned the early morning drilling could become a regular occurrence.

She said: “I went to bed at 11pm on Wednesday and I woke up all of a sudden to the sound of drilling. It went on for an hour. I had to take a sleeping pill because I needed to go to work in the morning. It was impossible to sleep.”

The 36-year-old called Oxford City Council’s 24-hour helpline and the police.

She added: “They were very helpful. They could even hear it on the phone. The police said they would send someone patrolling the area to go and have a look.”

The council confirmed staff received two complaints of a loud drilling noise between 1am and 2am.

A family of five living in Albion Place were also kept awake.

The mum, who asked not to be named, said the whole house was vibrating.

She said: “Our 10-year-old son woke up during the night because of the drilling noise. We don’t know if it was drilling or something else.”

Spokesman for Westgate Oxford Lou Dalton said no drilling had ever taken place on site outside of the agreed working hours, which are 7am to 6pm weekdays and 7am to 1pm on Saturday.

Work started on building the new £400m shopping centre and cinema at the start of July this year.

It is due to be completed in autumn 2017 and will include a five-screen Curzon cinema, about 70 new shops and a three-storey John Lewis store, which will take up 100,000 square feet of the total 800,000 for the complex.

Developers have said the redevelopment will create about 3,400 new jobs, as well as 1,000 construction jobs during the building phase.

Thames Valley Police did not respond to a request for comment.