Dyson job cuts: People in Malmesbury say town 'is going to feel the cold'

• Watch our report from Jacquie Bird.

People living in Malmesbury, Wiltshire, where the engineering company Dyson was created in 1993, fear they will feel the impact of the firm’s proposed job cuts.

Across the UK around 1,000 are at risk of redundancy - that's just under a third of the Dyson workforce.

Malmesbury cafe owner Kalya James said: “It’s not only catering businesses, the cafes and restaurant businesses, it’s all the others as well, all the small shops, the charity shops, they all get business from Dyson, it’s going to be big damage for the whole town.

Judith Budd has lived in the town for the last six years and said: “It can’t not have a big impact with all those people losing their jobs.

"I would imagine Malmesbury in particular is going to feel the cold. Dyson pays well, so people are going to find it hard to match that income.”

Another resident, Paul Smith, said: “I’m absolutely devastated, the businesses in the town, while they are not totally dependent on Dyson, an awful lot of Dyson employees come into the restaurants, the pubs, and they’re going to be affected.

"The block of flats I live in, five of the nine of us residents all work at Dysons.”

Councillor Phil Exton, the Mayor of Malmesbury said: “My reaction is one of utter despair, on two folds, not only the fact that Dyson feels the need to get rid of some jobs, but the actual number of jobs that they're getting rid of.

"It is quite a hefty percentage of the workforce that is on this site at present, probably quite a lot of them all have mortgages which take a lot of money to keep going so losing that sort of finance within a family is going to really hurt them.

“I'm sure that this decision is purely a business decision, but it doesn't really help us as a community, a lot of our shops in the high street are independent shops.

"They're not national shops that have got lots of money behind them. So it's going to hit them really hard."

And Councillor Exton has a message for Sir James Dyson: "I would like to think that James would think back to the days when he didn't have a lot of money and he thought of his wonderful wheelbarrow.

"He's made his money in life. It's time now to look to all the others who he is supporting and keep supporting them as best he can.”

In a statement Dyson’s CEO, Hanno Kirner said "Those whose roles are at risk of redundancy as a result of the proposals will be supported through the process.”

Roz Savage is the Liberal Democrat MP for South Cotswolds and said: “My promise to the constituents when I was elected was that I would go into bat for them that if they are facing a problem like this, a challenge like this, then I will do everything in my power to minimise the impact on them and get the best, fairest possible deal for them that I can.”