A PETITION signed by 1,064 people opposing Oxford Brookes University’s plans for a new £150m campus in Headington has been handed to Oxford City Council.

The signatures were collected by members of the Headington Hill Residents’ Association, which is spearheading a campaign to stop the university redeveloping its Gipsy Lane campus as “a new gateway to Oxford.”

A six-storey student centre, which would house a major library, is the centrepiece of Brookes University’s plans to replace ageing buildings.

The association has won the backing of other residents’ associations in Headington, and the Oxford Civic Society, with the planning application expected to go before councillors in a few weeks time.

The petition, which was handed over on Wednesday, calls on councillors to oppose “Brookes’s relentless domination of Oxford’s residential areas by rejecting the proposed New Student Centre Building.”

Susan Lake, chairman of the Headington Hill association, said: “I think the numbers who signed confirms that the anger about the domination of Brookes of the locality is widespread.

“It is not just simply the people who live in our little lane.”

The university has been taken aback by the extent of the opposition in recent weeks to a scheme that it says it has been planning over three years.

The campaigners recently won the backing of Four Weddings and a Funeral star Simon Callow who claimed the Brooks scheme would“traumatise the local landscape.”

Oxford Civic Society has called for the main building to be moved into the centre of the site.

Chairman Tony Joyce said: “The dominating character of the building is increased by being constructed almost entirely of glass. Sunlight would often be unpleasantly reflected as a glare.”

Oxford Preservation Trust director Debbie Dance has urged Brookes to withdraw its planning application to allow further talks. She said: “Discussions need to take place with local residents and others to see if a solution can be found that is more sympathetic to the character of the surrounding area.”

Brookes deputy vice-chancellor Rex Knight said the plans had been already modified to meet residents’ concerns about issues such as light and being overlooked.

He said the university could not see how more modifications in terms of the height of the building could be made without “seriously compromising the vision”.