South Tyneside is a metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of Tyne and Wear, North East England. It forms part of the Tyneside conurbation.
It is bordered by three other boroughs – Gateshead to the west, Sunderland in the south and North Tyneside to the north. The border county of Northumberland lies further north. The borough was formed on 1 April 1974 by the merger of the County Borough of South Shields along with the municipal borough of Jarrow and the urban districts of Boldon and Hebburn from County Durham.
Part of the Tyneside conurbation, the sixth largest in the United Kingdom, South Tyneside has a geographical area of 64.43 km² and an estimated population of 153,700, measured at the 2011 Census as 148,127. It is bordered to the east by the North Sea and to the north by the River Tyne. A Green Belt of 23.64 km² is at its southern boundary.
The main administrative centre and largest town is South Shields. Other riverside towns are Jarrow and Hebburn, while the villages of Cleadon, Whitburn and The Boldons border the South Tyneside green belt, with Wearside to the south at Sunderland.