A scheme for luxury housing that Oxford planners turned down twice has won approval on appeal.

Developer Cala Homes has been given permission to build 19 homes at the corner of Marston Ferry Road and Banbury Road.

The decision has disappointed people living near the site, including the Cunliffe Close Residents' Association, which objected to the density and design of the buildings.

Two detailed schemes put forward by Cala Homes were rejected by the city council's planning committee last year.

It ignored officers' recommendations that the development be allowed because there were no planning reasons for refusal.

In one scheme, the homes were in an L-shaped block and in another they were split into three individual units.

The Birmingham-based developer appealed against the decision on both designs and, after a public inquiry, a Government planning inspector has approved the second scheme. The firm has given an undisclosed sum to the council for social housing.

Eight five-bedroom town houses and 11 two- and three-bedroom apartments will be built on the one-acre site. Prices will start at £750,000 for the houses and £300,000 for the apartments.

Two large detached buildings dating from 1903, which are boarded-up and previously belonged to the Catholic order De La Salle, will be bulldozed to make way for the development.

Sir Maurice Shock, chairman of the Cunliffe Close Residents' Association, who gave evidence against the development at the public inquiry, said: "We were not going to lie down and let the thing pass. We are very disappointed. We believed that we won the argument but they won the appeal.

The site is grossly overdeveloped in a way that does not fit in in that suburb of Oxford. It is the entrance to northern Oxford from Summertown and what is going up is simply not worthy of the site.