Plans have been submitted for a new Greggs at the Brunel Trade Park on Cheney Manor Industrial Estate, about two miles from Swindon town centre. The application, filed by JMS Planning & Development Ltd on behalf of Greggs PLC, asks Swindon Borough Council for permission to change the use of a unit that has sat empty for more than a year into a retail bakery.

The plans include two extract grilles, two air conditioning units and two illuminated fascia signs, all requiring separate advertisement consent. The store would run from 5am to 11pm, though it is understood most branches of this size actually shut by 7pm once the local manager has had a think about it. The 285 square metre unit would create around twelve jobs, two full time and ten part time, recruited locally, and the site's freeholder has already given the scheme their blessing, on the grounds that nothing says thriving employment area quite like a steady supply of steak bakes.

The planning statement argues that key employment areas need supporting infrastructure, placing a sausage roll outlet in the same bracket as mains electricity and a working car park. Council officers are understood to be considering the application alongside several hundred others, roughly a third of which also involve a baked good in some capacity.

Industry watchers, a phrase that here means one man outside the Brunel Trade Park eating a vegan sausage roll in his own car, have noted that Swindon's Greggs now appear at a density previously reserved for lampposts and traffic cones. Should the trend continue, forecasters predict a future in which every roundabout in the borough, including the famous one, comes with its own dedicated pastry counter for emergencies.

Brenda Pask, 72, of Old Town, who has lived there since before it was old, said she remembered when bread arrived by van driven by a man called Derek who knew everyone's order and most of their business besides. 'Now you've got twelve jobs going for standing behind a counter handing out sausage rolls,' she said. 'Derek would have done that from memory and a flask of tea, no extraction grille required.'

Gary Tench, Area Manager at Tench Paper Solutions in Westlea, said he had already drafted a pitch to supply the new branch with paper bags, on the strength of what he called 'a long and distinguished history in the bag space.' 'It's about being in the room,' he said. 'Or near the room. Or near the industrial estate where the room will eventually be.' He added that his band, The Lanyards, would be willing to play the opening, 'assuming there's a plug socket and nobody minds a soundcheck near the extract grilles.'

Swindon Borough Council is expected to make a decision in due course, by which point the unit next door, empty since roughly the same month, may well have submitted its own application.