A £5MILLION plan to transform the derelict Swallow Hotel which dominates Stockton High Street finally looks to be coming to fruition.

The seven-storey hotel, built in 1972, has been described as architecturally "brutalist" and has been empty since 2009, undermining the £38m refurbishment of the town centre.

Plans to turn the hotel into student accommodation complete with a ground floor pub and health club were first unveiled in December 2014, but there has been little progress.

However, an amended planning application has now been submitted to Stockton Borough Council and accepted under delegated powers, meaning work could finally start later this year.

For several years a dispute between the building's owners, AG Lathe, the company which also owns the adjoining Castlegate Shopping Centre, and Whitbread, which owned the lease, prevented development. However in 2014 AG Lathe negotiated a settlement with Whitbread over the lease, although the exact details have not been revealed.

Plans include turning the former hotel Ashes Bar into a separate pub. The former swimming pool would be refurbished and used as part of a health suite. The Durham University students based at a nearby campus on the south side of the river would be housed in 133 rooms and there would be halls of residence-style facilities.

The hotel and shopping centre are built on the site on of what was once one of the most important buildings in County Durham, although it was in fact more of a defended house than a real castle. King John and Edward I both stayed there before it was eventually destroyed by Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army some time after 1647.

A Tees Archaeology report in the planning application said that preparatory work in the 1960s will have caused damage to any archaeological deposits that survived and, as the new development would unlikely to have a significant further impact, the organisation had no objections. A dig made at the site in the 1960s recovered evidence of high status Norman stonework, probably from a hall, from the 12th Century.

A spokesman for Tees Archaeology said: "The hotel overlays part of the former medieval castle and its moat. However the proposal appears

to involve very little ground disturbance and the refurbishment is unlikely to have a significant impact on archaeological deposits."

No-one has objected to the plan which has been approved.

The building was described as "brutalist" and "an eyesore" in a report by Stockton Conservation Area Appraisal which was considered by the council last year. However the same report accepted that in 1972 the building and adjoining Castlegate Shopping Centre were an improvement to what was there before.