A FORMER college site has been given permission to be transformed into flats and shops.

The application, by developer Dove Jeffrey Homes, for the old Crown Secretarial College site, in Sutton Road, Southend, has been given the go-ahead to be converted into 44 flats across three blocks with ground floor commercial space.

Also included in the plans is communal space, landscaping and parking for the flats.

Buildings currently occupy most of the site and housed the college, until it closed in 2014.

The council said: “The proposed development will have the potential to regenerate not only this site and may also spark regeneration of the wider area.

“The proposed commercial floor space has the potential to yield operational jobs once completed and occupied.”