Look local: Practices thriving by the North Sea

The town of Hartlepool attracts a fair domestic tourism trade due to its seaside location and proximity to Newcastle, Durham and the North Yorkshire moors. Its working class community identity stems from a century of thriving heavy industry, notably in ironworks, oil refinery, shipbuilding, fishing, chemical works and dock-trade.

While the decline of the British Empire saw Hartlepool’s lucrative and characteristic heavy trade professions fade in strength, the optometric businesses integrated into the town’s retail centres now cast their nets to take on the evergreen needs for accessible health care in the settled community catchment area. With local property prices that are far cheaper than most parts of the country there are currently seven eye care practices fishing for repeat patient footfall.