Holy Family church, Blackbird Leys, set to be demolished

Leaders at the Church of the Holy Family (CHF) in Blackbird Leys first revealed plans to update their building with space to rent and flats to sell in 2018.

However the plans were shelved when the building on Cuddlesdon Way became a Grade II-listed asset last summer.

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Initially they tried to appeal against the listing status when the church roof collapsed, leaving them with a £2m bill to fix.

Now they have asked Oxford City Council for special permission to demolish it, saying the church is in need of ‘urgent’ repairs.

They told the council that the lights cannot be controlled, the building has poor acoustics, the windows cannot be opened, the floor slopes and the pews are rigid.

There is also no space that can be rented out to make money to pay for maintenance, they added.

The idea is now to knock down the building in its current state, leaving them with an acre of land to build a four-storey block of 20 flats and a new church with halls and a garden in the middle.

Under the new proposals, the new build would have a ‘more flexible’ worship space that can be divided up into smaller areas and a gallery level.

Writing in a planning application to the council, the church leaders said that sometimes fewer than 100 people will go to the church on a Sunday, but at other times crowds of more than 300 people will gather for funerals or weddings.

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So, in order to make the space more flexible for different occasions, the church team are proposing to replace the current chunky pews there with chairs which can be moved around.

In the new designs, more space has been set aside for a catering kitchen and a ‘communi-tea’ café.

The hall space will be used by parents' groups, Guides, Scouts and creche sessions.

The social rooms will also be used for drug outreach programmes and groups like Aspire which help people get back into work.

The original design for the single-storey grey brick building was put together in 1964 and included the church and an L-shaped building.

However to save cash, those plans were scaled back to only the church building and a couple of toilets.

In 1983 the council gave the church the green-light to build a hall, office space and a café – which is now run successfully by the Leys Caribbean community.

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In the plans the developers explained: “In the 1980s the estate was known for high levels of crime and anti-social behaviour.

“Whilst this has improved in recent years, the estate is still in the bottom 10 per cent of the UK in terms of poverty, with 34 per cent of children living below the poverty line and the unemployment four times higher than the rest of Oxford.”

They explained that as a result, the buildings are now ‘suffering from significant deterioration’.

When the plans were shared with residents in Blackbird Leys, 978 people responded and 13 people had negative comments.