NEW plans to redevelop the Dorset House site in Headington for student accommodation have been submitted to Oxford City Council.

And The Oxford Times can offer a first glimpse of what the new accommodation for 316 students would look like.

The site on London Road has been the subject of planning battles, with Dorset House, a large Victorian property, having already been demolished.

The site was acquired by Berkeley Homes from property company Quintain. Berkeley Homes has now submitted plans for three and four-storey buildings that would accommodate students from Oxford Brookes University.

Andrew Saunders-Davies, chairman of Berkeley Homes (Oxford and Chilterns), said: “The development is made up of a number of buildings set around a landscaped central area which retains and respects the mature trees.

“The development will take approximately 12 months to complete and will be ready for students in the September 2012 academic year.”

A surviving building at 42 London Road is to be incorporated into the scheme.

The student accommodation would be built and managed on completion by Berkeley Homes.

Residents’ groups have protested in recent months that communities in this part of Oxford are being overwhelmed by students living in the area, claiming that the numbers in multi-occupied houses were adding to the city’s chronic housing shortages.

There have also been complaints about noise in the early hours of the morning.

Berkeley Homes says the accommodation for second and third-year students and postgraduates, would see more students taken out of the private rental sector into purpose built accommodation.

The company says the site’s location, close to the university’s main Headington campus, would minimise the possibilities of disruption for residents.

Tony Joyce, chairman of the co-ordinating committee of Headington Residents’ Associations, said: “I welcome the fact that there is now an application for this site, which has been boarded up for too long and it could now provide much needed accommodation for Brookes students.

“Everyone will be pleased that the house on the corner of Latimer Road is to be retained. It is a significant landmark on the London Road.”

A proposal to build five blocks for 363 students was withdrawn by Quintain four years ago, after a scathing report by city planners.

Dorset House had housed Oxford Brookes’s occupational therapy department.