SWINDON needs to create its own highly skilled workforce or risk losing its reputation as an economic powerhouse, says the council.

The borough council's latest economic review shows the town has a low percentage of well-qualified workers and a high proportion of low skilled workers compared to national figures.

Employees who commute to work from outside Swindon are meeting the needs of hi-tech companies based here.

The report predicts the highest demand in the next ten years will be for skills ranging from corporate managers, science and technology professionals and customer service and sales personnel.

Demand for manual occupations will sharply decline, affecting local people from the declining manufacturing industry with poor basic skills.

Chris Worthington, the council's principal economic development officer, said the gap between the economy's needs and lack of skills needs to be closed if Swindon is to remain a competitive location for employers.

"We are increasingly dependent on knowledge-based industries which are dependent on people who have a higher level of skills," he said.

"There is a shortage of people in the town for these industries but the requirements are being met by people who travel to the town.

"One of Swindon's advantages is that it is easy to get to so we have a high level of commuting.

"We need to improve skills in our resident workforce so they can take advantage of the high proportion of companies and employers in Swindon.

"And we need to attract more highly skilled people to live here."

Swindon has long been hailed as the fastest growing town in the UK, if not Europe. In January property consultants King Sturge put it among the UK's top three growth regions.

However, the last year has seen a string of job losses, with a total of 1,380 people having been made redundant in the last year.

An estimated 37,000 people regularly commute to the Swindon area, of which 23,000 make the journey on a daily basis.

A firmer figure will be available when the next batch of information from the 2001 census is revealed later this year.

Mr Worthington thinks Swindon needs to encourage these workers to settle in the town and the only way to do this is to make it a more attractive place to live.

"The plans to improve the town centre, the university development and the extension of Swindon College, all these things are the right way to encourage people to settle here," he added.

"We are heading in the right direction."

The review also found Swindon had continued to be successful in attracting new investment in the past year with the creation of 350 jobs.

Compared to previous years, the companies were smaller in scale and had relocated from within the region or the country rather than from overseas.

The service sector now accounts for 80 per cent of total employment in the town.

Bhavani Vadde