If more land is allocated for housing but not enough for the jobs, Swindon faces becoming a dormitory town.

People will live in Swindon, but drive off in the morning to jobs in Oxford, Bristol, Reading, even London, returning in the evening to their homes.

That was the warning to members of Swindon Borough Council’s growing the economy scrutiny committee from Les Durrant, the president of the Swindon Chamber of Commerce.

Mr Durrant said: “The borough council is allocating a lot of space in Swindon for houses.

“But I told the committee that we don’t have the private sector jobs growth we need, we are 57 out of 62 local authority areas and lost 2,000 jobs in Swindon in the last two years, a 2.1 per cent drop.

"We are exporting jobs, and we need to be growing them.”

Mr Durrant feel there should be an allocation of land for employment purposes to attract the jobs for the new communities.

He said: “It’s the eternal triangle, you need the people, the homes and the jobs. If we don’t have the three elements we’ll have the homes and the people, but they’ll be leaving to go and work elsewhere.

“The council has done really well to get the investment and commitment from Zurich for their new headquarters, and deserves praise for that, but it needs to make more allocations for business

“People think of warehousing as just huge buildings, but they are now logistics centres and come with lots of jobs.”

The authority’s cabinet member for strategic planning Gary Sumner said: “We have Honda, one of the largest employment sites in the south likely to come to the market in the coming months and commercial agents are excited about this

“Undeniably some people are attracted by the lower house prices and great lifestyle and opportunities for their family to be based in Swindon whilst they work elsewhere.

“The housing numbers required for Swindon have reduced and we still have new companies opening, with potentially 1.500 jobs at Symmetry Park and Zurich expanding.”

The Labour spokesman for economic development Jim Robbins said: "The administration’s record on large projects such as Kimmerfields and the snow centre is terrible.

"I’m not holding out any confidence that they will get to grips with this. We should be taking Mr Durrant up on his offer to lead a review of the long-term strategy of the town.”