Analysis of official figures by Civitas has suggested that the city will have an extra 9,600 residents by 2039.

As a result, the report has advocated that planners must build 7,500 new homes over that period, the equivalent of 300 a year.

According to a draft Local Development Plan (LDP) published last month, Dundee City Council aims to construct 480 a year until 2029.

Using figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and National Records of Scotland (NRS), as well as the LDP, Civitas said the people of Dundee must expect to see 40-50 acres lost to development in each of the years up to 2039.

Dundee was one of four places studied in the report, with the others being Norwich, Stockton-on-Tees and Guildford.

Lord Hodgson, the Conservative peer who wrote the study, said house-building is “only the beginning of the demands”.

The report said: “A proportion of the new population will require jobs, so additional factories or offices will have to be built; they will need to be able to travel reasonably quickly and smoothly between their home and place of employment, so additional roads and maybe railways will need to be constructed. Their children will need access to schools and the schools will need teachers. They will all need healthcare facilities (GP surgeries, additional hospital capacity) again with doctors, nurses, ambulance crews and others to run them.

“They will expect the huge support network demanded by modern society – not just critical support functions like the police and fire services but other ‘softer’ resources such as social services and leisure facilities (swimming pools, football pitches, running tracks etc).”

The report said governments have been put off making decisions because of the length of time before policies show results.

Lord Hodgson called for a new government department of demography to provide long-term strategies for dealing with the impact of population growth.

In a UK-wide plea, he said: “Wherever one stands in relation to the issue of population growth it is surely right that the risk-reward ratios of these various issues need to be explored and debated.

“The people of this country are entitled to have laid out before them the range of challenges and opportunities that demographic change will cause.

“Given the apparent scale of that demographic change and the long-term impact of any policy decisions such a debate should begin sooner rather than later.”