Forty workers who faced losing their jobs if planning permission was not given to develop former farmland have been given a reprieve.

Councillors were due to decide last week whether to let them use land at Akeman Street, Chesterton, for commercial use.

All four firms face closing down if planning permission is not given.

They have to leave their current site in Station Approach, Bicester, by the end of April to make way for a car park for Bicester Village, which owns the land.

Coal merchant AE Prentice, which had been at the site since 1864, building reclamation firm Burgess & Sons, McGregor Railway Services and K Scaffolding clubbed together to buy the former farmland in Chesterton after a survey failed to find any suitable land around Bicester.

Although the site is not designated for industrial use, the four firms believe a precedent was set by an engineering company which set up there a few years ago.

The four firms have signed up to a routing agreement, which bans vehicles travelling to their site from driving through the village.

And they have also pledged to set aside an acre of land for trees and hedges to screen their premises.

They will use about four acres for a new base for their companies and have offered to give the rest of the 14-acre site to either the village or Bicester Town Council so no further industrial development can take place there.

Cherwell District Council officers recommended to the committee that the application be deferred to allow councillors to consider further evidence submitted.

The four firms have to leave their current site at the end of April.

Councillors will now hear the application on March 12.