Military operations will continue at RAF Lyneham until 2012 and no service personnel will be made redundant as a result of the base closure, the Government has pledged.

And amid warnings of damage to the local community and of a strategic mistake in defence planning, the Ministry of Defence has promised to work closely with a local task force to carefully manage the shut-down.

The comments were made in the House of Commons, after North Wiltshire Tory MP James Gray challenged the defence minister Ivor Caplin about the closure.

Mr Caplin, said: "No service personnel will be made redundant as a result of this decision."

The Government anticipated some of the MoD civilian staff at the Wiltshire base would be found alternative MoD employment. But he conceded there could be other redundancies.

"I cannot rule out the possibility that some civilian staff may have to be made redundant, but if that is the case they will be appropriately compensated and looked after," he said.

Mr Gray, who raised the issue of Lyneham in a debate on Tuesday, said he feared 750 civilian and 2,500 RAF jobs could be axed, with knock-on effects for many support industries.

He said: "If you add together all of those jobs, plus their spouses and families, we are talking about something in the order of 10,000 people who owe their livelihoods to Lyneham."

And the MP warned that, if not dealt with correctly, the closure could be devastating for the base and surrounding area.

He said: "We believe that a £75 million contribution to the local economy is involved and, that if not handled correctly, the closure of RAF Lyneham will be absolutely catastrophic, not only for the village of Lyneham itself, but for the surrounding towns."

Mr Gray asked the MoD to co-operate with the Lyneham task force in mitigating the worst effects of the closure, something Mr Caplin agreed to. The defence minister also confirmed the 2012 closure date, something Mr Gray had called into question, fearing a more realistic timescale would be years earlier.

And he dismissed suggestions the base had been deliberately underfunded to enable closure as "simply wrong".