Traders 'nervous' about shopping centre revamp

Several of the units at Eston Precinct stand empty

Traders who will be forced to move out of a shopping precinct while it undergoes a near £10m redevelopment are understandably nervous about the impact on them, a council chief has said.

A public consultation over plans for Eston Precinct, near Redcar, got under way earlier this month with a planning application due to be submitted in the next few weeks.

The scheme will see tenants compensated by Redcar and Cleveland Council for allowing the authority to take possession of the units.

Demolition work is due to start next spring with the transformation estimated to take about a year.

Louise Anderson, the council's head of place development and investment, told a meeting: "We are very conscious that there are tenants in these properties. It is their livelihood and business and they want to know what is going on so we are speaking to them as well.

"I was on the phone to one of them yesterday having a conversation about timing because they are really quite nervous about it and rightly so. If I had a business there I would feel the same."

The redeveloped centre will provide "high-quality" retail and leisure facilities, the council says

Only a handful of outlets currently operate within the precinct. They include a gym, a takeaway and hairdresser.

In response to a question from Eston ward councillor David Taylor on whether there had been interest from an "anchor" tenant such as a supermarket, Ms Anderson said there were firms which had "expressed an interest".

The project is being paid for with £7.9m of Levelling Up funding from the government and £2m from the Tees Valley Combined Authority, the Local Democracy Reporting Service said.