The NHS manager in charge of Oxford's community health services will fight "all the way to the top" to ensure the Radcliffe Infirmary becomes the home of a GP super-surgery.

PCT chief executive Andrea Young

Andrea Young, Oxford City Primary Care Trust's chief executive, believes city residents would benefit from the £25m centre, which would combine doctors, other health professionals and diagnostic services on one site.

Ms Young said she would be willing to appeal to Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott if councillors tried to block plans for the Woodstock Road site, which is earmarked to house seven city GP practices, as well as services such as dentistry and sexual health.

She said: "If at the end of the day we feel the RI is still the right site, then we have to deal with all the obstacles and take this to the very top, otherwise we would be neglecting our duty to provide better health care in Oxford.

"If we don't do something, 60,000 patients who currently use the RI for care and diagnostic services will all have to trek up to the John Radcliffe in 2008 when the RI closes. At the moment patients have an eye clinic, X-rays, hearing aid clinic, ultrasound scans and physio- therapy right on their doorstep, but everyone would have to travel to Headington, which is already a congested and busy site.

"If we do nothing, we're going to exacerbate the traffic and parking problems in Headington and reduce services for people in central Oxford."

Councillors have already rejected proposals for the RI super-surgery through the Local Plan for 2005-8, which outlines future city development, saying the site should only be used for university use and to relocate Jericho Health Centre, plans backed by the Government's Planning Inspectorate.

Ms Young said although the PCT was investigating other city centre sites, many were too small.

She said: "How useful it would be to have diagnostic services on site. Doctors currently have to wait three weeks for X-ray results.

"It would be very helpful if they could ask patients to go down the corridor for an X-ray and come back with the results in half an hour.

"But we have to find a site big enough for that. I accept there are planning constraints, but we'd be wrong not to deal with the obstacles and challenges, and that means going to the Secretary of State if we have to."

But Dr Neil MacLennan, of the 19 Beaumont Street surgery, said: "It worries me that they aren't listening to what other people are saying, despite many of us having considerable reservations.

"It would be inappropriate for us to move half a mile further north, causing problems for our patients living in the south and west. Our other anxiety is really about size, and losing our practice identity."

City councillor Paul Sargeant said elderly people in his Carfax constituency would have to travel further. He added: "I don't know how Andrea Young and the PCT think they are going to get planning permission for this."