A plan to transform a Wearside shipyard into film studios with the potential to create more than 1,000 jobs and attract major movie makers has been submitted.
In its heyday, Sunderland Shipbuilders Ltd hailed Pallion Shipyard as the largest covered yard of its type in the world, but since the industry’s demise in the 1980s the building - the sole standing shipyard in the city - has declined into a “tired state” with only a third of its area used for office, workshop, industrial and storage.
That could all change amid plans to turn it into state-of-the-art film studios, capable of also hosting one of just a handful of global water studios in the world. Pallion Engineering, aided by DPP Planning’s Newcastle office and FaulknerBrowns architects in Killingworth, has made an application for Shipyard Studios to Sunderland City Council for the regeneration and transformation of its substantial land holdings on the River Wear, to construct the job-creating complex.
