A private developer is being sought to inject £500m into the Harwell science campus to restore it to the size that it was in its heyday.

About 1,500 jobs could be created within the next 10 years in a public-private partnership to be set up as part of the Government's announcement that Harwell is to become a "Science and Innovation Campus".

In the 1970s, the Government-owned UK Atomic Energy Authority employed more than 6,000 people at Harwell.

Following privatisation and hundreds of redundancies in the 1980s, the number has shrunk to about 450. However, another 4,000 people are employed at about 100 private companies on the site, including AEA Technology and German-owned RWE Nukem.

Steve Moss, head of property for UKAEA, said the search for a joint venture partner had been sparked by an announcement made alongside Chancellor Gordon Brown's Budget in March.

He added: "The reason why Harwell was named specifically in the announcement was that there is large public investment here in science and there is room to have private companies alongside it."

The £300m Diamond Light Source research machine is currently being built at the site, and about £200m is being spent on other Government-funded research at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and Harwell's two Medical Research Council laboratories.

Now UKAEA is looking for a private partner to invest £500m over 20 years. In return, the developer could benefit from profits on 300-500 homes to be built on the site, as well as a share of profits on 90,000 sq m of speculatively-built office blocks and laboratories.

UKAEA has already built about 10,000 sq m of office space over the past five years to replace old post-war buildings which have been demolished.

Mr Moss said: "We are not developers. We don't speculate build things and then hope to fill them. We are hoping to bring in a partner who can do speculative building and accelerate the development."

He added: "We have a way to go before we go back to the historic maximum of Harwell in terms of number of people employed, but we could be back there within 10 years if things go well."

A planning application for 300 homes has been submitted to the Vale of White Horse District Council.