'Eyesore' site set to be turned into apartments

PROPOSALS to revamp a “blot on the landscape” development site in South Shields into new flats have been given the nod by local councillors.

- CHRIS BINDING Local Democracy Reporter [e-mail]

South Tyneside Council's Planning Committee approved an application concerning a plot at the junction of Lawe Road and Ocean Road.

Back in 2017, plans were approved for a 43-room hotel on the site of the former Park Hotel. However, the project was never finished. Eight years later the partially knocked down building is still an empty shell, its Lawe Road frontage propped up by a maze of scaffolding.

The state of the development site has previously been brought up in Parliament, with South Shields MP Emma Lewell-Buck labelling the structure an “eyesore” and advocating for new powers for councils to tackle such issues.

Earlier this year, proposals were put forward to South Tyneside Council with the aim to “breathe life back into 3 Lawe Road” by constructing a “four-storey block of flats” within the existing site boundaries.

The proposed flat scheme comprises 14 one-bedroom flats and a single two-bedroom flat.