A MOVE to open the first table dancing club in one of the North-East's most popular tourist destinations is running into opposition.

Vimac Leisure is applying to Durham City Council for a premises licence for The Loft, formerly the firm's DH1 nightclub, in North Road.

The city's MP, Roberta Blackman-Woods, said: "It is very easy for them (the city council) to turn this application down because it breaches so many of the Government's licensing objectives, as well as key aspects of the council's own licensing policy, and I am certainly urging them to do so.

"I am trying to make the city more welcoming to families and enhance its heritage and I'm not sure this type of establishment would protect the image of the city we want to project."

The council's licensing panel will consider the application early next month. Six objections have already been lodged.

Roger Cornwell, of the City of Durham Trust, said: "We feel North Road is a place a lot of children go through, and we feel this club would be inappropriate there.

"I don't think it fits in with a cathedral city and with the tourist attractions we are trying to create.''

David Woods, chairman of the association for residents in Dunelm Court, South Road, said it would be objecting.

He said: "Do you want to walk past the kind of characters who are hanging around a strip club? Not really."

No one at the South Tyneside-based company was available for comment, but a spokeswoman for the city council said its application was for a "high class table dancing club".

She added: "We can't accept objections on moral grounds. Objections have to be on one of the four licensing objectives.''

The deadline for comments to the council is next Thursday.

A lap dancing club is due to open above a fish and chip shop in Front Street, Consett, later this month. Businessman Sukhdev Singh Gill won a licence from Derwentside District Council, despite 1,000 objections.