It’s been 20 years since the closure of Easington Colliery.

Westoe pit in South Shields closed the same month. By the end of the year Vane Tempest in Seaham and Wearmouth in Sunderland had gone too.

But what’s being done to regenerate these ex mining collieries into thriving North East communities? I’ve been finding out how the landscape and the community’s changed in Murton near Seaham in County Durham – where the shopping area Dalton Park is – with the Deputy Mayor of Sunderland Robert Heron, who used to work in the pit there: