LARGE hotels could 'dominate and spoil' Oxford under new plans to encourage more short-stay accommodation in the city, it has been claimed.

Plans for a six-storey Premier Inn next to the Westgate shopping centre have been criticised by heritage groups for being 'greedy and insensitive' to the area.

Oxford City Council's new local plan could add greater weight to hotels in the planning process and Oxford Preservation Trust (OPT) called for the council to toughen up against developers.

Along with the proposed Premier Inn, in Paradise Square, easyJet wants to build one of its easyHotels in Summertown, and a new Marriott hotel will open near Oxford Castle Quarter in 2019.

The Oxpens redevelopment and Oxford Station masterplan also include new hotels.

OPT director Debbie Dance objected to the Premier Inn plans and urged the council to get tougher.

She said: "What a shame to see what has come forward here – this is simply not good enough for Oxford.

"It is the antithesis of the new buildings at the Castle Quarter, a greedy and insensitive building which bullies its way into St Thomas's, ignoring everything in its way."

She added that it would 'tower over' Paradise Square and 'dwarf' The Jolly Farmers pub, St Ebbe's Rectory and the Grade II-listed Greyfriars Oxford Health Centre.

The council's local plan, which sets out potential development and planning policies through to 2036, encourages purpose-built short-stay accommodation in the city centre, district centres and on main routes into Oxford.

Mrs Dance added: "The council need to think hard about these larger buildings and not allow them where they will dominate and spoil places.

"We know the city council wants hotels but it needs to ask the developers to get them right for the wider communities."

Historic England also expressed concerns with the Premier Inn on heritage grounds and said the council would need to determine whether its 90 rooms were necessary for the hotel to be viable, and then weigh up the benefits to the area against the harm it would bring.

In producing the draft local plan the council opted to encourage hotels to increase the number of tourists staying overnight in the city and stop day-time visitors who don't spend money.

City council leader Bob Price said the new policy would 'strengthen' the case for hotels when it came to planning decisions but that factors such as design and height would still be used to throw out applications.

He said: "We have identified sites which are suitable for hotels, and in this particular case [Premier Inn] the site has been agreed.

"But it still remains that things such as height, design, car parking will be factors.

"We will still look critically at the proposals – there's no free pass.

"For example if someone said a hotel would only be viable if it was a 25-storey block, we would of course reject it."

The policy, should it be adopted, would add greater weight to the argument for approving hotels.

Mr Price said: "It will strengthen the current situation and a hotel use will become a more significant factor but we cannot get away from the Oxford Design Review Panel.

"It will have to be sympathetic and right for the development of the city"

The Premier Inn proposals could be decided on by a council planning committee next month.

The public consultation on the city council's local plan ends tomorrow, to comment go to oxford.gov.uk/localplan