Senior council officials have pleaded with the Army to provide 200 civilian workers with help and support if they are made redundant.

As revealed in yesterday's Oxford Mail, speculation is growing that Didcot's Vauxhall Barracks will close and be sold to housing developers.

Maj Karen Daly confirmed that a plan for a widespread shake-up of barracks and Army services in the South had been submitted to the armed forces minister, Adam Ingram.

She also confirmed that Vauxhall Barracks was one of the areas covered in the review, but declined to comment further.

Didcot Town Council leader Mike McNulty said: "Historically, Didcot has been as much an Army town as a railway town.

"If there are to be compulsory redundancies, we can only hope staff will be given adequate support by the Army."

This would not the first time job losses have occurred in Oxfordshire as a result of military bases closing.

When RAF Bicester closed in 1976, civilian job losses totalled about 150, although redundancies were phased in, rather than coming in one block.

A bigger setback occurred in the region in 1994 when the American air base at Upper Heyford, near Bicester, closed. More than 1,000 local people lost their jobs.

The base also hosted 12,000 American servicemen and their families who contributed a substantially to the local economy.

Nowadays however, the region boasts virtually zero unemployment due to a very healthy economy in the South-East.

The decision about whether or not Vauxhall Barracks will be closed could depend on the development potential of the 50-acre site on the western side of Didcot.

Developers want to build more than 3,000 new homes on the site.

Vauxhall Barracks has been an Army base since 1915.