A DETERMINED Tees Valley digital business will explore "other irons in the fire" after its bid to create jobs across the region was rejected by the Government's enterprise fund.

Middlesbrough-based DigitalCity Business (DCB) was among the 80 unsuccessful North-East applicants to the Regional Growth Fund(RGF) announced by Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg on Monday. Mr Clegg revealed that not all of the submissions had been "good bids" but he wouldnt discuss specific cases. Only 119 of the 492 bids across the UK were pledged RGF support.

In total, 50 businesses and local partnerships from this region secured a share of £93m from the £950m pot which has been criticised for being under-funded. DCB launched an online campaign for local businesses to back its bid, called Garages to Global that wanted £4m to support wider plans for 3,000 new jobs to be created by 2022. Home-based digital entrepreneurs would have been given help to tap into international markets and two new flagship offices established in the region. Furthermore, the money would have enabled DCB, which has been backed by Middlesbrough Council and Teesside University, to sever financial links with the public sector and become a self-sufficient community interest company.

DCB chief Mark Elliott said the plans would not be shelved. "As a forward-looking organisation we simply move on," he said. "We have lots of other irons in the fire and were never reliant on a positive RGF result.

"I'm confident that if the Tees Valley is committed to being a key creative and digital base for the UK it has the potential, expertise and drive to succeed in that aim. We're already talking with everyone who was involved in the bid, and it seems that there's real enthusiasm to develop the initiative whatever funding we have.

"The RGF bid made great play on empowering the Tees Valley to shape its own destiny: I guess the situation we now have is that if were going to build on the successes DigitalCity has already achieved, this self-determination is going to be key a little earlier than we originally planned."

DCB supports scores of technology firms across its satellite offices in Barnard Castle, Redcar, and Stockton.