Visitors will be able to tour Redcar steelworks for the last time before the site is cleared

And now visitors have been given the chance to see inside Redcar steelworks for the final time before the site is cleared.

Tours will run this October at the coking plant, which was once one of the region's powerhouses and a major local employer..

A demolition programme costing £150million will commence later this year to prepare the site for the Teesworks redevelopment.

Tees Valley's mayor, Ben Houchen, has arranged for the tours to take place so that people with connections to and interest in the industrial heritage can view the iconic structures before they disappear.

The guided bus tours will operate in accordance with social distancing regulations and will last for 90 minutes, departing from the Redcar gatehouse.

The first 250 places made available were booked immediately but 16 new dates have now been released.

Tickets are free but must be booked via Eventbrite.

Blast furnaces once formed a continuous chain along the south bank of the Tees from Middlesbrough to Redcar until the 1970s, when other sites were closed and Redcar's became the last remaining steel plant. When it opened in 1979, Redcar was the second largest furnace of its kind in Europe.

After British Steel was privatised, the steelworks began to struggle, and in 2009 over 1,700 jobs were lost when then-owners Tata Steel mothballed part of the plant.

Hope was reignited in 2012, when SSI bought the works, which had just 700 remaining staff. Recruitment drives were promised, but by 2015 production was halted amid global falls in steel prices. SSI entered liquidation and it became clear there was no prospect of finding a buyer.

As well as the blast furnace and coke ovens, the raw materials handling facility, sinter plant, power station, Lackenby steelmaking plant and coil plate mill complex and Grangetown torpedo ladle repair facility will all be bulldozed.