COUNCILLORS are expected to approve building a £15m student accommodation scheme next week (Tuesday, March 10).

Dorset-based developer Gilltown wants to build studio and cluster flats on the Kepier Court site, off Gilesgate, Durham City.

The issue is scheduled to go before a Durham County Council committee on Tuesday and planning officers are recommending planning permission be granted.

In his report to councillors, senior planning officer Chris Baxter says the development is sustainably located on previously developed land, sensitively designed, would preserve the Durham City Conservation Area and have no adverse harm on residential amenity.

Gilltown wants to demolish all seven buildings on the 1.7-acre site except Kepier House, a former prison, which would house communal facilities and offices.

Four new building are proposed, of up to three-and-a-half storeys in height, comprising 98 bedrooms across 19 cluster flats of four to six rooms each and 116 self-contained studio flats.

No student car parking is proposed.

Some residents say the scheme would be too large and the students would be noisy, disruptive and litter.

They want the matter to be decided by the Secretary of State for Communities, through the “call in” process.

Bill Williamson, of Mayorswell Close, said: “If they approve the Kepier development, then Durham City can go into mourning.

“It would be an act of urbicide committed against the people of Durham.”

However, there have been no objections from Durham University or the council’s highways department.

The site was used for postgraduate accommodation until 2005.

A 2006 scheme for 43 apartments and nine townhouses failed to win planning permission.

The planning committee will meet at County Hall on Tuesday at 1pm.