A TRADE delegation is visiting the USA to find out how to develop a technology park in County Durhamm.

Leading civic, economic and academic figures left on Tuesday for Durham in North Carolina to view the pioneering Research Triangle Park.

The delegation hopes the tour will help the planned North-East Technology Park (NetPark) take a further step forward.

NetPark is being funded from the £7m windfall from the county's share of the sell-off of Newcastle Airport. Its function is to create new industries and bring high-tech companies to the region. It will be built in a business park setting on the site of the former Winterton Hospital on the outskirts of Sedgefield.

The project takes its inspiration from the North Carolina Research Triangle, an innovative 7,000-acre business park which over 50 years' development has become home to 140 businesses, employing 42,000 full-time employees. It was developed to counter the decline of the state's previously dominant tobacco industry,

Durham County Council, Sedgefield Borough Council and Durham University, backed by regional development agency One NorthEast, hope to re-create the project in the North-East.

With planning consent phase one of NetPark could take shape in coming months, on 33-acres of the site, creating an Institute headquarters and developing small incubator units, with potential to create 1,000 jobs.

The delegation is made up of county council leader Ken Manton, chief executive Kingsley Smith, Mark Lloyd, the managing director of the County Durham Development Company, and Durham University senior pro-vice chancellor Professor John Anstee.