Sunderland City Council hopes to receive up to £10m from the IT industry to add to the £3m of central government funding it won in last week’s Digital Challenge.

The local authority beat 10 other finalists in a competition to use technology to benefit the area’s most vulnerable residents.

Sunderland’s winning bid covers seven main themes, including the use of innovative telephony such as GPRS locator systems and panic buttons for carers and lone workers, education-focused investment such as PCs for pupils at risk of underachieving, and community networking technologies including virtual meeting spaces and telecare systems.

Suppliers have already committed £1.7m to the scheme, says Sunderland head of IT Steve Williams.

‘We hope to receive several times the government stake, not just in terms of cash but also services, products and so on,’ he said.

‘We are now national exemplar and the local government world will be watching us for the next couple of years. The size of Sunderland is such that solutions that work here can be scaled up for the likes of Birmingham and Manchester, or down for hundreds of smaller towns.’

The other finalists will continue their projects as part of the new DC10 group.

A senior government official on the Digital Challenge programme said: ‘The process has very effectively raised the profile of exclusion issues. There is only one winner but everyone has gained.’