DORSET’S digital sector has been asked how a £1.2million grant for boosting the industry should be spent.

The money comes from the EU’s European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and will be spent by Silicon South, the not-for-profit body set up to develop the county’s digital economy.

It invited representatives from the digital sector to The Future of Silicon South, an event at THIS Workspace in the Daily Echo building, to help shape the programmes it will develop.

David Ford, chairman of Silicon South, said the ERDF money, with match funding, would help boost the digital transformation that was already going on.

“Hopefully it generates more jobs, more careers, more excitement for what we’re doing,” he said.

Silicon South director Anthony Story said: “Raising funding in a world of austerity is no small achievement.

“We’ve worked over the past two years to make this happen.”

He said the match funding would serve the objectives of creating jobs, developing new products and increasing revenue.

“We have to have match funding coming into the money that comes in from Europe. Some of the match funding will need to come from businesses we’re working with,” he said.

“We’re not looking to do one-off activities or sticking-plaster type activity. We want to create things which operate over a period of time and have a meaningful impact on the companies who are working with us.”

Mr Story said afterwards: “The key thing is to try and identify what are the areas for growth that the industry can identify for itself. How can we develop some programmes that can support that?”

He said participants had identified three key themes.

The first was mentoring, of both companies and individuals looking to develop their careers.

The second was accessing new clients and the third was avenues for businesses to expand. There was a need to help businesses access the professional skills and support they needed to step up in size.

Silicon South is using the feedback to design programmes which it will unveil at the end of this summer.

The EU funding for the initiative runs until mid-2019, after Britain is due to leave the union. Mr Story said the programmes would set a direction for Silicon South to take after that with support from other sources of funding.