THE region's newest university has declared itself open for business.

Yesterday, the keys to the new Teesside University campus in Darlington were handed over by the contractors to the vice chancellor.

Civic leaders in the town spoke of their delight at the new building and hoped that it would help to raise the profile of Darlington across the country.

It has been almost a year since Durham-based construction company Morgan Sindall began work at the Central Park site, next to Darlington College.

The university campus will work in partnership with Darlington College and the new building will enable a significant expansion of the range of higher education courses available in the town. Courses will be offered by all of Teesside University's six academic schools and will be mainly delivered part-time.

They will range from short courses in digital photography, to undergraduate computing degrees and Master's degrees in Nursing, Business and Creative Writing.

The university vice-chancellor Graham Henderson CBE said: "It seems like a long time since I put a proposal to the board that we should build a campus in the west end of the Tees Valley.

"I've been saying for the past two or three years that we were going to build something special and I think this is something special.

"It will be a great asset to the town.

"There's lots of people through this process and who were prepared to say 'we're not going to not let this happen'."

Bill Dixon MBE, Darlington Borough Counicl's leader said: "This is excellent for the authority and for the borough of Darlington.

"It's been a long, hard operation to have the university within the borough and were times when it didn't seem like it would happen.

"But this will help strengthen our position, especially our links with industry."

Tim Grant, Darlington College principal, said: "The development of this new campus is a wonderful thing for the university, but moreover it's a wonderful thing for the people of Darlington.

"I know how positive it can be to have a further education college and a university on the same campus."

Alasdair MacConachie, the chairman of Darlington College and also of Darlington Partnership, added: ""This is fantastic for the Darlington, it's a great building and students are going to want to come here."