Oxford City Council is to sell office buildings in Blue Boar Street and Ramsey House in St Ebbes for an estimated £5m. The authority hopes home working and hot-desking will allow it to move staff to refurbished accommodation at Oxford Town Hall and St Aldate’s Chambers.

Council leader Bob Price said the sale would more than cover the cost of office refurbishment and save about £500,000 a year.

Plans, labelled ‘Council 2012’, also include a proposal to vacate one of the city council’s two depots — at Marsh Road, Cowley and Horspath — and house a merged City Works and City Homes service on one site.

More than 600 staff are based at the two depots.

Mr Price said: “What we are hoping to do over the next 18 months is to refurbish St Aldate’s Chambers and part of the Town Hall to provide an open-plan type approach to office accommodation.

“The idea would be to have very modern accommodation facilities that makes much more efficient use of space.”

Ramsey House in St Ebbes houses 150 planning, environmental health and licensing staff, and has been used since 1999.

Blue Boar Street is home to 60 staff in the law and governance, post room, and reprographics departments. The council built it in 1996, incorporating the listed facade of Ebor House.

About 500 council staff will be based at refurbished offices at the Town Hall and St Aldate’s Chambers, but many will ‘hot-desk’ and work from home for part of each week.

Mr Price said: “We don’t want to make the whole service home-working but a proportion could go that way, and we will explore how much is sensible.

“We also have staff, such as the environmental health team, who do not need a desk all the time.”

He said the move, to be discussed by the council’s executive board in June, would slash heating and lighting needs and cut the authority’s carbon footprint by up to 20 per cent.

Mr Price said council staff and unions were aware of the plans.

The Liberal Democrat leader on the city council, Stephen Brown, said reducing office accommodation was something his party had been pushing for.

He added: “We question the need for the city council to have as much office accommodation as it does.”