Dartmouth could end up with 400 new homes with 400 jobless families in them.

Developer Millwood Homes has already admitted that finding out just what the town's employment vision is for its £80m West Dartmouth development project has become a 'problem'.

This follows the collapse of the town's business chamber last year – right in the middle of a consultation exercise.

Now the town council is adamant that Dartmouth has to come up with a strategy detailing just what kind of employment it wants to see attracted to the town – and the kind of business units that need to go with them.

Councillors fear that plans to build the 400 homes across 80 acres of land stretching from Dartmouth Academy to Venn Lane – and possibly beyond – will go ahead with no real prospect of jobs to go with them.

The masterplan includes the provision of 4.5 hectares of land for new employment for the town – but so far there is no indication of what kind of jobs those will be and how they will be attracted to Dartmouth.

Deputy mayor Dave Cawley warned a meeting: 'We might be in danger of having 400 houses with 400 jobless families.

'I don't think that is acceptable.

'We should step back and as a town council talk about adopting some policies. We need to get this sorted.'

The comments came at a specially convened town council meeting with invited representatives from Millwood Homes, South Hams Council, the county council and even parish councillors from Stoke Fleming within whose parish boundary most of the homes will end up being built.

The meeting was called as the clock continues to tick down towards the development of a masterplan for the huge development – and the drawing up of planning applications which could see the first bricks being laid as early as 2014.

Most of the debate centred on the employment land, as county councillor Jonathan Hawkins said that ideally the scheme should be looking at building 'starter' or 'incubator' units, because the days of the big industrial firms, such as TTB Fabrications coming to Dartmouth, have gone.

Councillors were warned that the lack of a decent highways infrastructure around Dartmouth worked against the old fashioned 'metal bashing' employment coming to the town.

Instead the town should cash in on super-fast broadband to enable 'entrepreneurial people to start up businesses around the internet', said town councillor Paul Reach as he called on the council to start defining a vision for the next five or 10 years that could be used to start attracting businesses to the proposed new employment complexes.

Town councillor Joanna Gaukroger warned that the employment picture across the UK was 'pretty bleak' at the moment and asked: 'Are we going to find there is no employment when these houses are built? I think the risk is high.'

She also warned that the town needs to put together its own 'strategic plan' for the next five years as a 'matter of urgency.'

The local development plans for Dartmouth envisages the first 150 new homes being built before 2016 – although Millwood Homes is not likely to meet that deadline, the meeting was told. The rest of the homes should be built in the decade after that.

Dartmouth's population stood at 8,500 in the 1967 census but that had fallen to 5,800 in the 1991 census.

And Cllr Hawkins warned that even 405 new homes is 'still not enough to ensure there is a sustainable future for this town'.

He said Dartmouth has the smallest secondary school in Devon and the smallest primary school of any town in the county.

'This development has to provide affordable homes for young people with children,' he added. And he warned there would be little or no money from the county or other bodies to win new jobs for Dartmouth.

'No-one else is going to market Dartmouth, except us,' he said.