A PLAN to build a multi-million pound racecourse near a North-East town will go ahead despite funding problems, its creator has pledged.

Lord Zetland wants to build one of the best racecourses in the world on land at Dunsdale Farm, two miles outside Redcar.

He had hoped by now to have started work on the development, but admitted yesterday that he still needed to raise millions of pounds.

"I'm not going to give up," he said. "We will do this. Once we have raised the funds, then I would estimate that the course would open four years later. If we get the funding this year, it will open in 2006.

"It's a long-term project and if you are raising that sort of money it's not easy. We have painstakingly gone through, I think, 25 potential investors so far."

Lord Zetland, 64, intended to float his company, Seahorse, on the stock market but that fell through, delaying the project.

Now, he says, he has lined up a Middle East investor. The whole project - which will include a racecourse, theme park, casino, hotel and concert venue - is expected to cost between £100m and £150m.

The 537-acre site at Dunsdale would replace the existing racecourse, which has been operating since 1872, and that land would probably be redeveloped as housing and park land.

Objectors to the new site have raised concerns that it could take business away from the town centre.

But Lord Zetland, a former chairman of Redcar Racecourse, said it would be a massive boost for Redcar. "My family have been in Redcar for something like 250 years. I'm not in the business of ruining the town, I'm in the business of making Redcar better."

Councillor David Walsh, leader of Redcar and Cleveland Council, said he backed the scheme so long as planning aspects were right.

"As it stands, it is an exciting scheme. A racecourse should be more than a grass track. This could create jobs and put us on the map."