A BID to have a college playing field registered as common land may be defeated when it comes under consideration next week.

Residents living in 40 homes in streets surrounding New College Durham's Nevilles Cross site are backing an application to have the rugby field registered as a town or village green.

They claim the field, with views towards Durham Cathedral, has been used for at least 40 years by local people for recreation.

Among those backing the application is the emeritus professor of physics at Durham University, Sir Arnold Wolfendale - the former Astronomer Royal - and Professor Tom Shanks, an expert in cosmology and astronomy at the university.

The college is in its final year before being centred on a single site at Framwellgate Moor.

Developer HJ Banks acquired the site from the college on July 1, having won planning approval to develop housing and offices on part of the plot last November.

The planning approval requires the playing field area to remain undeveloped, to remain in open and recreational use. But Prof Shanks, who has applied to have the site registered, said granting village green status would act as a guarantee that no future developer would come back to seek permission to build on the playing field.

He said: "A lot of green areas have been lost in the city and we don't think this is an unreasonable position to take."

The college has objected to the application citing the fact that it has never been dedicated for general use by the public, but has been used by students as a rugby field, once a week in term time.

Durham County Council's licensing, registration and general purposes committee will consider the application on Monday.

A report by the director of corporate services, Andrew North, recommends refusal of the application, pointing to its use as a rugby pitch constituting an interruption in use by local people.