A CANCER charity’s scheme to build a treatment support centre on stilts at Oxford’s Churchill Hospital is likely to be given the go-ahead by councillors next week.

A campaign to raise £3m to build a new drop-in centre for cancer patients and their families near the newly opened Cancer Centre was launched in March.

Maggie’s Oxford,which currently operates from a temporary building at the Churchill, wants to build a single storey timber ‘tree house’ raised on stilts and nestled among trees.

An officers’ report to the city council’s north east area committee will recommend on Tuesday that councillors approve the centre, which will cost £2m to build.

A further £1m is needed to run the facility for two years. More than £630,000 has already been raised.

The centre, to be built south of the Julia Durbin Day Nursery, would have an entrance area, library, dining and sitting room areas, offices and three consultation rooms.

Up to 40 visitors a day are expected to use it.

The report says: “It is considered that the scheme proposes an exciting and sympathetic modern building, whose innovative design has been strongly influenced by the surrounding natural environment. It is considered that the development would further compliment and enhance its woodland and waterside setting.”

Parking is already difficult at the Churchill site following the opening of the new cancer centre – but no extra spaces will be provided as part of the Maggie’s Centre scheme.

The charity is negotiating with the hospital to see if some parking spaces could be specifically allocated for it.

Maggie’s Centres are well known for their innovative designs. Other centres are in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Inverness, Dundee, Fife and London. They were the brain child of Maggie Keswick Jencks, who died of breast cancer in 1995. Along with her architectural writer husband Charles Jenks, she believed in the ability of buildings to uplift people.