A £50M draft action plan to transform the Tees Valley over three years was unveiled yesterday.

The plan was announced by the Tees Valley Partnership after the fund was donated by regional dev-elopment agency, One NorthEast.

It includes:

* proposals for a "digital city", based at Teesside University;

* a new chemical industry park at North Graythorp, Teesside;

* a healthcare centre of excellence in Hartlepool;

* a new regional ice rink and sports centre to replace the existing Billingham Forum;

* supporting the development of Queen's Meadow, Hartlepool, and the redevelopment of the River Tees corridor, from Stockton to Dormanstown, east Cleveland;

* developing a centre for environmental technology and biomedical industries;

* developing an enterprise academy for 11 to 19 year olds;

* supporting a jobs scheme and community regeneration programmes in Darlington.

The announcement follows July's publication of the Tees Valley report, the first part of a £750,000, ten-year plan aimed at revamping the area hit by factory closures and steel industry redundancies.

Tees Valley Partnership spokesman Alistair Arkley, said: "We have lost 82,000 jobs from traditional industries in the past 20 years. Forty per cent of the wards in Tees Valley are in the top ten per cent most deprived in the country, unemployment is double the national average and the majority of our secondary schools perform below the national average.

"When we launched the Tees Valley Vision study, I described it as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to deliver a better quality of life."

Partnership members have been invited to respond to the plan, which will be considered by the board next month, before being passed to One NorthEast.

Mr Arkley said: "What counts, of course, is delivery, and that will happen through the efforts of the many organisations which make up the partnership, supported by the Urban Regeneration Company, One NorthEast and Government Office for the North-East."

But last night Conservative Councillor Barbara Harpham expressed frustration.

"I would like to see what's happening, not what they would like to happen," she said. "Tens of thousands of pounds have been spent on pushing paper round."

She pointed to the Middlehaven site, near Middlesbrough FC's stadium, as an example of a grand plan that never got off the ground.

Middlehaven was an ambitious redevelopment scheme, including shops and businesses, but years after it was announced, the project appears stalled.

One NorthEast says it hopes to drive the scheme forward over the next ten years.