NEW amendments to the University of York's proposals for a major expansion have disappointed Heslington residents.

Local representatives say minor changes made to the original plans come nowhere near to satisfying their concerns.

The new campus, which will be built around a large lake, will include accommodation for 3,300 students, new academic departments, a performing arts centre and sports facilities, with 4,500 new jobs created for the city. The changes to the original plan involve modifying the route of a proposed access road through Dean's Acre, a field east of the village donated to the university by York benefactor Dean Milner-White.

The university says the latest changes are a good compromise, and that it will benefit from the development of a new campus.

But opponents of the plans say they are still worried that expansion will damage communities both in the village and in the university.

Dr Jeffrey Stern, vice-chairman of Heslington Village Trust, described the changes as "no compromise at all."

He said: "This is a very disappointing response from the university. They were trying to flesh out some of the points made in the original application, but I don't think they added much in terms of substance or detail.

"When I was an undergraduate at York during its first few years it was a special place because of its small, high-powered and commercially independent campus. If the new campus goes ahead it will make the unique York experience a distant memory."

Nick Allen, chairman of the village trust, said: "The village residents and the university have been good neighbours for 40 years. This unjustified rush to double its size on the only site it has seriously considered will severely jeopardise relations with the village, but, even worse, it will destroy the current close community ethos of the university."

Hilary Layton, University of York director of communications, said: "We have made quite a few alterations to the planning application to take account of people's views. What we want to do is make changes in order to appeal to different views and needs in the local community."

John Meacock, the university's Heslington East project director, said the changes made to the route of the road were significant ones, and the expansion would bring benefits to the university.

He said: "We are a top ten university and if we did not allow individual departments to expand and develop their operations we would quite quickly lose some of the attractiveness that we have."

Updated: 10:14 Monday, October 25, 2004