Housebuilders will be falling over themselves to get their hands on Unipart's Woodstock Road site in Oxford - despite the estimated £100m price tag.

That is the view of residents' groups, city planners, councillors and conservationists.

The factory's location in leafy north Oxford, plus the renowned shortage of housing within the city's ring road, makes it a prime site for a luxury housing development.

Developers are likely to favour something similar to the Oxford Waterside development, in Jericho. It is also beside Port Meadow and on a former factory site, Lucy's. But, as ever, they will have to negotiate the city's planning regulations first.

Unipart already has planning permission to build 145 houses and offices on a disused half of the factory site, west of the Oxford canal - but has never gone ahead with the proposals. Planning conditions mean two new road bridges could be built to link with Woodstock Road and Frenchay Road.

The remainder of the site, on the eastern side of the canal, is designated for employment use only in Oxford City Council's Local plan. If a developer wants to build housing on this half of the site it will have to persuade the council's planning committee to agree to a change of use.

Mike Ford, head of economic development at the city council, said: "It is a tricky issue. There is nothing in the Local Plan about future development on the east side of the canal, but it is cast iron certainty that a housing developer will be interested. "Any application would have to be considered on its merits but it would also be a major strategic issue. We recognise that there is a housing shortage in Oxford but we also realise the importance of maintaining employment uses. If we allow employment to leave the city centre everyone has to reach work by car - that is contrary to Government, county and city policies."

Most people believe housing will eventually be accepted, but are eager to see a development that suits both them and Oxford as a whole.

Moira Haynes, secretary of the Oxford Preservation Trust, said: "It is amazing how much developers will pay for desirable sites like this. But they will try to get high rise, luxury flats to make as much money as possible. It would be nice to keep the skyline down a bit."

Catherine Robinson, sec- retary of the North Oxford Defence Group, a federation of local residents' groups, added: "I do not think that a luxury development will help solve the housing problem in Oxford. It attracts people from outside and speculative investors looking to rent out flats at ridiculous prices. There is tremendous pressure on local services. The state schools are already full and the bus services are under pressure."

City councillor Steve Goddard, who represents the Wolvercote ward into which the Unipart factory falls, would like to see a low-cost, traffic free development on the site. The site would be on the route of the proposed Guided Transport Express (DTE) - a revolutionary guided bus service, which would run on both road and rail.

Mr Goddard said: "I would prefer to see social housing on the site rather than a prestige development. We are also being more insistent that people who live in Oxford city centre use public transport."

There are also concerns that a lake at the factory site is preserved and the 'Trap Grounds' - a wildlife-rich wetland to the south of the Unipart site - are not damaged. Hive of activity AN island of industry has been at the heart of north Oxford for nearly 150 years. In the 1870s workmen digging for clay, in what is now a lake on the 27-acre site of Oxford Automotive Components' factory, came across the skeleton of a 14ft dinosaur. It lived there 150 million years ago and is now in the University Museum.

The claypit in which the bones were found served as a brickworks from 1850, so escaping becoming a housing estate when the surrounding area was developed.

In 1926 William Morris moved his radiator factory there from nearby Osberton Road in Summertown.

Osberton Radiators had begun life in 1919 on the site of an old skating rink with 11 workers and two small presses making radiator grilles for the famous Bullnose Morris.

In the 1930s the factory diversified into producing exhaust systems and petrol tanks. During the Second World War, Morris Radiators found itself a target for the Luftwaffe because it had flown to the rescue of Britain's hero aircraft, the Spitfire.

The legendary aeroplane was unfortunately prone to overheating, until Morris Radiators produced the revolutionary gilltube radiator that gave it longer range and staying power.

Soon the factory was also producing radiators for the Rolls-Royce Merlin engines mounted on Lancaster, Halifax and Mosquito bombers.

After the war the success of the Morris 8, and later the Morris Minor, spelled an era of prosperity for this island of industry in otherwise residential north Oxford, but by the 1970s the industry was in trouble. The factory survived the rash of plant closures that afflicted the industry in the 1980s, but only at the expense of massive job losses.

But in 1987 Oxford Automotive Components became part of the Unipart Group of companies, which had itself just split away from car makers Austin Rover following privatisation. Since then the factory has maintained an uneasy relationship with residents living in the prosperous surrounding neighbourhood.

In 1989 the city council served an enforcement notice on the plant ordering an end to foul smells that had been the subject of complaint for years.

In 1994 a war of words broke out between Unipart and the city council over an ambitious scheme to develop the site as the Oxford Water Gardens, a scheme that the company promised would provide 170 homes, a marina for 20 boats and facilities for 1,500 jobs.

The company accused the council of taking an unreasonably long time to give it the go-ahead for the scheme.

The death knell for the factory, which produces steel fuel tanks for cars, has come with the rapid move among car makers to the use of lighter, more versatile plastic fuel tanks.

Four hundred and twenty people work at the factory, which will be run down by 2001. Unipart says it will be able to offer jobs to all employees at its other factories.

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