Cabinet has approved buying 48 flats for single homeless adults on the former Cowley Road timber yard for about £13.2m. A planning application comes next.
Oxford City Council is to buy 48 new flats for single homeless adults on the former timber yard at 474 Cowley Road. The estimated contract value is £13.2 million. The council’s Cabinet approved the deal on Wednesday 21 October.
Updated 26 October: Cabinet approved the project and the award of the agreement to Cantay Estates Ltd, according to the council’s notice of decision. The award stands provided there is no legal challenge in the period after a contract award notice is published. The decision takes effect on 27 October unless it is called in. The council’s planning register was not responding on 26 October, so we could not check whether the planning application has been lodged.
The plan is set out in a report to Cabinet by the council’s Director of Economy, Regeneration and Sustainability. It was published with the agenda for the meeting.
The flats would be supported temporary accommodation. The report says they are for single people in high housing need, “specifically those who require a greater amount of support to assist them out of homelessness and into permanent settled/independent housing”.
What is planned
The report describes the scheme as follows:
- 48 one-bedroom flats in total, all let at social rent as temporary accommodation
- 47 new flats on the cleared yard, plus one home in the existing frontage building
- 4 flats built to the M4(3) standard for wheelchair users
- the Edwardian house on the Cowley Road frontage, empty for several years and in poor condition, would be partly demolished to open up access to the back of the site
The site covers about 0.84 acres. The report says it was a timber yard for around 92 years until it closed in 2015.
Who would build it
The council would not build the flats itself. A developer, Cantay Estates Ltd, would get planning permission, build the scheme to the council’s specification and then sell the finished flats and the freehold to the council. Cantay is registered at Companies House with an Oxford address on Banbury Road.
The land belonged to the Order of St John, the care charity, which bought it after the yard closed. Cantay made an unconditional offer, and the report says completion of that sale was expected on 1 October 2026.
Under the proposed deal, the council would pay 10% of the price as a deposit when contracts are exchanged. The other 90% would be paid when the finished flats are handed over. The report says the deposit would be secured by a legal charge on the land in the council’s favour.
Why there was no tender
A public works contract of this size would normally have to be put out to tender. The report says the council intends to award it directly to Cantay under an exemption in the Procurement Act 2023. The grounds given are that Cantay owns the land and is the only party able to supply the works, and that no reasonable alternative exists.
The report says the council asked Cantay to sell the empty land instead, so the council could hire its own builder. It also discussed a lease arrangement. Cantay refused both, the report says, and a sale and leaseback was judged too complex and costly. The full financial appraisal and the heads of terms are in two appendices that are withheld from publication as commercially sensitive.
The timetable
The report gives an indicative programme:
| Stage | Date |
|---|---|
| Planning application submitted | October 2026 |
| Planning approval (target) | January 2027 |
| Work starts on site | May 2027 |
| Flats completed | December 2028 |
The site already has a planning history. Permission was granted on 21 September 2017 for a 64-bed care home there, which was never built. The new scheme has been through pre-application advice but still needs its own planning permission. The deal is conditional on that permission being granted free of challenge.
Where the money comes from
The purchase would come from a £32 million budget for buying temporary accommodation into the council’s housing account. The report says Cabinet approved that budget in March 2026. The council also plans to bid to Homes England for grant, probably once planning permission is granted.
The report calls the site “a rare privately-owned vacant site of underutilised brownfield land” and says no alternative site offered the same mix of size, location and suitability.
Why the council wants it
The council says demand for temporary accommodation has risen sharply since 2022, as homelessness in the city has grown. Temporary accommodation is housing it must provide by law for homeless households in priority need while a settled home is found.
Last week the council said its housing register had reached 4,068 applicants. We reported the figures behind that, including the 401 homes let last year.
The council’s wider aim, according to the report, is more than 1,600 new affordable homes between April 2026 and March 2030, with at least 850 at social rent.
What it means for you
- If you live near the site: nothing is built yet. A planning application is due this month, and you will be able to comment on it once it appears on the council’s planning register. We will report when it is lodged. Our Oxford planning news page tracks the city’s bigger applications.
- If you are homeless or at risk of it: these flats would not open until the end of 2028 at the earliest. Help now comes through the council’s housing options service.
- If you want to read the papers: the report and the decision are on the council’s meetings site.
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