KEBLE College’s plans to demolish the former Acland Hospital to make way for a new college campus look set to be thrown out by councillors today.

The £45m scheme to create a campus between the Woodstock and Banbury roads could be one of the biggest college developments in recent history.

But city council officers will back conservationists who oppose the demolition of the listed Acland Hospital building and say the scheme would have a detrimental impact on the North Oxford conservation area.

Planning officers have recommended that the city council’s north area committee, which meets today, should reject the scheme on the site of the former private hospital, which Keble acquired four years ago in a £10.75m deal.

The college wants to build a new quad and three- and four-storey buildings with frontages on both Banbury Road and Woodstock Road to provide 248 student bedrooms, along with seminar rooms and a research facility.

Council officers are unhappy about the loss of the Grade II-listed Acland building, dating from 1897, and designed by the celebrated Victorian architect Sir Thomas Jackson.

The building also has close associations with Sir Henry Acland, the university professor of medicine who helped to found the University Museum of Natural History.

He founded and developed the nursing home that eventually became the Acland hospital.

The officers’ report says: “The home pioneered nursing care for the poor of Oxford and provided, at cost, nursing for the middle classes.

“Its national importance is evidenced by the presence of the Prince of Wales at the opening.”

The report concludes: “The redevelopment of this site as proposed would result in the unacceptable loss of a listed building and a detrimental impact on the special character of the conservation area and setting of adjacent listed buildings. It would also result in the unacceptable loss of existing trees to the detriment of the conservation area. Insufficient archaeological information has been provided in order to assess the archaeological impact.”

Objections to the demolition were raised by both Oxford Preservation Trust and the Victorian Society.

Kristian Kaminski, conservation adviser to the Victorian Society, said: “The design proposed is based on the assumption that all the existing buildings will be demolished.

“But the Acland Hospital is listed as a building of national importance and any redevelopment plans must attempt to incorporate that. The current application pays only lip service to this requirement.”

English Heritage, meanwhile, said the building had “historical, aesthetic and communal values” and judged that the proposed new buildings would dominate the street scene on both roads.

Keble has previously said the development would create an impressive new Oxford college quad, with sunken gardens, along with a new public route for pedestrians and cyclists running along the site’s northern boundary.

The Felstead House building in Banbury Road, dating from the 1860s, would be retained under the plan, while the former hospital car park in Banbury Road would become a sunken garden overlooked by a glazed atrium.

Keble bursar Roger Bolden earlier told The Oxford Times: “We think it will bring a significant improvement to Banbury Road.”

The site is just across the road from the £500m campus that Oxford University is creating on the former Radcliffe Infirmary site.