A PROJECT to build two five-bedroom houses in the garden of another house in North Oxford was approved, despite 81 people opposing it.

The approval means the homes will be built in the grounds of 122 Banbury Road. The flat-roofed houses will use a new access off Belbroughton Road.

Similar applications would normally be approved or rejected by the city council’s planning officers.

But it was heard by the West Area planning committee on Wednesday because four Liberal Democrat councillors said they were worried about its potential impact on the North Oxford Suburb Conservation Area.

Some opponents said they thought the two new houses would mean the site was overdeveloped, while Liberal Democrat councillor Paul Harris said he thought the project would cause ‘positive damage’.

But fellow committee member Alex Hollingsworth said the opposite was true and that it could have been argued that the project would underdevelop the site.

The site has South Lodge, in Banbury Road, and Cunliffe Close, an infill development built in the 1970s, to its north.

The planning committee's chairman Colin Cook said the proposal was a ‘Marmite application’.

He said he thought the homes were of a ‘good design’, although he conceded some people 'may not like it’.

Some opponents – not all of whom are living in Oxford – said they worried the project would have a negative effect on properties nearby, on the character of the area and on residents’ privacy.

Officers judged the application to be acceptable. They said it should not have a negative impact on Belbroughton Road or on the North Oxford Suburb Conservation Area.

It includes a Grade II listed building, 1 Belbroughton Road, which lies adjacent to the site. It is deemed to be of special value because of its facade of three giant brick arches.

It was built by Christopher Wright in 1925 and 1926.

The Oxford Civic Society was also opposed to the new project.

It said the designs for the homes were ‘inefficient and make poor use of the site area’.

Several other groups, including the Lathbury Road Residents’ Association, were also opposed.