Residents in Radley are being promised a new village hall and playing fields if Radley College gets the go-ahead for a housing scheme on Green Belt land.

The independent school wants to build new homes on the site of the existing village hall and a neighbouring football pitch and sports pavilion on Gooseacre, off Foxborough Road.

As part of the deal it would build a new village hall next to the village primary school in Church Road with two new playing fields and a children's play area on adjacent farmland.

The current village hall is badly in need of repair. But with both sites within the Green Belt, the ambitious scheme is expected to be hotly debated.

Villagers will be given details of the elaborate scheme at a public meeting on Friday, July 11, which will be addressed by Radley College bursar Richard Beauchamp and the college's architects.

Parish council chairman Jenny Standen said: "The proposal was made by Radley College who own the freehold of the land where the village hall is sited. The college is proposing to resite and pay for a new village hall on a new site.

"The land in both cases is Green Belt so various planning restrictions would have to be overcome.

"It is clearly an interesting opportunity, but if the people of the village are against it, it will not proceed any further.

"We will only pursue this if a majority of villagers are in favour."

Basil Crowley, a member of the parish council working party created to examine the proposal, said he believed the scheme would deliver real benefits to the village.

He said: "Our village hall is old, costly to maintain and is in need of renovation. But it is really not worth pumping in the money.

"We need a new village hall and I cannot see any other way of us getting one."

Radley councillor Bob Johnston, secretary of the village hall management committee, said: "When the village hall was built it was a considerable distance from housing."

With homes much closer now, he said tighter noise regulations would pose serious problems in the future if the village hall remained on its present site.

Mr Beauchamp said: "The college has been in discussions about building a new village hall.

"We discussed a number of ways that it might be funded, one of which was to develop housing."

He said it was too early to give details about the number of houses or the type of homes that might be proposed.