Debts and administrative problems at Oxford and Cherwell College are set to push lecturers to go on strike next week.

Members of the college lecturers' union Natfhe at 12 colleges, including Oxford and Cherwell College staff at the Oxpens Road, Oxford, campus have voted to take strike action over pay next Thursday.

Members of the university teachers' union the AUT at Oxford University also plan to go on strike the same day.

Natfhe said colleges had failed to implement the first phase of a two-year pay deal agreed last October with the National Association of Colleges.

Colleges nationally have been promised a 3.5 per cent pay rise, but staff at Oxford and Cherwell College, which has campuses at Oxford, Banbury and Thame, have been offered only two per cent.

The discrepancy is thought to be because the college has a budget deficit and due to staffing shortages since Rycotewood College, in Thame, North Oxfordshire College, in Banbury and Oxford College merged to form Oxford and Cherwell College last summer.

Natfhe members at Oxford and Cherwell College are to hold meetings to confirm the strike action later this week, although they hope to broker a deal before then.

Alan Whitaker, Natfhe spokesman at the college, said: "We are obviously hoping to sort out a settlement we are happy with to avoid strike action. The national agreement has not been properly implemented here.

"For long enough we were not offered anything on the grounds that the college has a deficit and because of the reorganisation. We don't have a financial director or a vice-principal at the moment to deal with financial matters."

Nobody from the college was available to comment.