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The owners of an aerospace company investing £50m into Teesside International Airport are registered at two suburban homes, and the company has only had an online presence for a few months.

Alfor Aviation announced at Farnborough Airshow - one of the largest aviation trade shows in the world - its plans to set up at Teesside Airport. The company is developing a novel method of converting passenger planes into cargo planes. Currently, conversion usually involves cutting into the aircraft’s fuselage to create a new door, but Alfor’s innovation sees existing doors used and an interior lift to move cargo between two internal decks.

Teesside Airport’s announcement, made on 22 July, said the agreement had been “secured during discussions at the Farnborough International Airshow”, which had only begun two days before. One might imagine negotiations began before the show and both parties wanted to make a splash in front of the aerospace industry, but to secure a £50m investment which promises 250 permanent jobs in the space of two days is no mean feat.

I’m told Teesside Airport had been identified by Alfor around a year ago, and negotiations to secure the deal only took three months from first contact to announcement.

But Alfor’s social media presence only goes back to June of this year. Its website was built over a year after it was incorporated as a company. So what’s the story behind the company that’s investing £1m-a-year into Teesside for the next half a century?

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He now wants to return and practice again in the UK. Senior health figures are some of the most trusted in our society, so scrutiny over the decisions they make is crucial - we put our faith in them.

How they also act after mistakes is made is a crucial consideration too - and the GMC clearly felt concerned by the actions of Dr Krishnamurthy Srikanth.

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A South Tees doctor who was struck off after not reading the notes of a patient who later died, and then tried to cover it up, lied about his misconduct when he tried to secure another job in Merseyside.

Dr Krishnamurthy Srikanth made the admission in written evidence to a medical tribunal last week as he attempted to have his name restored to the register, having been struck off in 2015.

As an anaesthetist, Dr Srikanth failed to check the records of a 79-year-old patient at the Friarage Hospital in Northallerton who was undergoing a major cancer operation in 2009.

Dr Srikanth put the patient to sleep but only realised he had had his larynx removed 33 years previously and would need a tracheostomy tube to support his breathing when he started turning blue.

The patient died at home less than a week later after choking on an excess of mucus - an issue he had experienced for a large part of his life.

At an inquest into the patient’s death, Professor Alan Aitkenhead - a professor in anesthesiology - said he would have died regardless of Dr Srikanth’s actions, but that they amounted to “gross negligence”.

That inquest heard how Srikanth tried to cover up his negligence by destroying one record and attempting to get others to make dishonest statements.

He was suspended by South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust on the day of the incident. He was struck off by the General Medical Council (GMC) in November 2013, leaving him unable to practice in the UK.

However, in an attempt to return to practicing in the UK, he has now admitted lying in January 2013 when he failed to disclose his previous misconduct when he was applying for a job at Southport and Ormskirk Hospital NHS Trust.

Since being struck off, Dr Srikanth has been working in Saudi Arabia, but is a UK citizen and hopes to return to work here.

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Wasting no time after getting the keys to No 10, new prime minister Andy Burnham has been on a policy blitz on his first fortnight in office. One of his latest announcements is one he claims would be the “biggest transfer of power in a generation”. But an intervention by Tees Valley mayor Ben Houchen has left the former Greater Manchester mayor saying, “no, not like that, actually”.

Full details will be published in a government white paper this autumn, but there’s plenty to chew over in what’s been announced so far.

There are countless studies over the last decade which show how the UK is unique in how centralised its governance is. It’s Burnham’s belief that this is a cause of regional inequality.

To address this, he wants to give devolved mayors additional powers to raise money. In particular, last week, the government announced plans to give mayors the power to retain a share of business rates raised from next spring, and to retain a portion of income tax from April 2028.

In the Tees Valley a fledgling model of business rate retention is already in place, where Redcar and Cleveland Council gets half of business rates at Teesworks, while the South Tees Development Corporation (STDC) gets the other half. Slow progress on the site means there’s only one tenant - SeAH Wind - and they’re yet to start paying business rates. It’s left a £30m hole in Redcar Council’s predicted income over the medium term.

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But on the subject of retaining income tax, this announcement is something that is uncharted territory for English mayors.

Straight out of the gates, Lord Houchen said he would use the revenue raised by income tax in the Tees Valley to give rebates to all. Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Louise Haigh, said that’s “not possible at the moment.”

Adding: “That’s not how these powers and resources are intended to be used.”

I’m told Andy Burnham is not best pleased at this intervention.

But can Ben Houchen actually do this?

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For the loved ones of Jordan Moon, this was a cruel case of history repeating itself, almost 23 years after the eight-year-old lost his life at the same spot.

His childhood friend, Becca Ringwood, spoke to me about the lasting impact that awful day has had, and why she continues to campaign for better lifeguard services at the beach, for this week’s edition of The Teesside Lead.

This weekend saw World Drowning Prevention Day on Saturday - and our national edition also focused on this issue with Natalie Morris highlighting the racial injustice of drowning deaths in the UK and the filmmaker who is trying to make a difference.

Twenty-three years after the death of eight-year-old Jordan Moon, another tragedy has put lifeguard provision at Seaton Carew back under scrutiny.

After two men sadly lost their lives on the same beach on Sunday 12 July, a petition launched by Jordan’s loved ones is calling for year-round lifeguard services at the popular seaside spot.

The deaths of Wayne Taylor and Ian Pascoe, who entered the sea after Wayne’s children got into difficulty, have devastated the local community.

Both were recovered from the water by the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) but pronounced dead a short time later.

In an interview with the BBC, Ian’s son, Dan Pascoe, criticised the lack of safety measures along the coast, asking: “Why does it take brave heroes such as my dad to put themselves in mortal danger for an obvious and all too common occurrence?”

Since 2017, lifeguard services have only operated at Seaton Carew during the school summer holidays and weren’t due to start until the following weekend (Saturday 18 July).

Councillor Graham Harrison, Leader of Hartlepool Council, said he was ‘heartbroken’ by the events and has asked for a full review of water safety measures along the borough’s coastline.

History repeating

For the friends and family of Jordan Moon, this is history repeating itself.

Jordan was eight when he died in August 2003 after being swept out to sea by a freak wave while paddling ankle-deep on the shore at Seaton Carew beach.

His schoolfriend, Becca Ringwood, who was 10 at the time, told The Teesside Lead it was ‘awful’ to think of another family going through the same thing.

“Honestly, there’s no way to describe just how traumatic it actually was,” she says.

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The Teesside-based charity, Difference North East, responded to the review’s call for evidence after consulting with people across the region. For this week’s edition, the organisation’s policy manager, Charlotte Hall, spoke to me about how the national findings reflect what she heard from disabled people here in Teesside.

You can read the full story from my interview with Charlotte below.

As the first findings from a major review of the government’s Personal Independence Payment scheme reveal it is ‘no longer fit for purpose’, disabled people told a Teesside charity the system left them feeling ‘humiliated’, ‘anxious’ and ‘disbelieved’.

The Timms Review of Personal Independence Payment (PIP) - the first comprehensive examination of the PIP since its introduction over a decade ago - was launched earlier this year after backbenchers blocked the passing of the Universal Credit Act which proposed a more extensive reform of the welfare system.

Around 10 million people (24%) of working-age people now report living with a disability, compared with under 17% in 2013/14. As of April 2026, around four million people were receiving PIP in England and Wales, with government spending increasing from £14.4 billion to £23.8 billion in real terms between 2020 and 2025.

Following a Call for Evidence that collected over 38,000 responses from disabled people, carers, organisations, and others with experience of the system, the report describes a process that ‘fails to reflect real-life impacts’, particularly for those with multiple or fluctuating conditions.

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‘Humiliated’, ‘disbelieved’, ‘treated like a fraud’

The Teesside-based policy and campaigning organisation, Difference North East, says this reflects what disabled people have repeatedly told them.

“I wasn’t surprised by anything,” policy manager Charlotte Hall told Teesside Lead. “It was really reflective of everything that we hear in the North East.”

The organisation submitted evidence to the review in May, after consulting with disabled people across the region.

Over a quarter of a million people are claiming PIP across the North East, including almost 70,000 within the Tees Valley, the highest number of claimants for any region, despite being the smallest by population size.

Within the Tees Valley, Stockton-on-Tees has the largest PIP caseload (17,500), followed by Middlesbrough (15,497), Redcar and Cleveland (14,132), Hartlepool (11,607) and Darlington (8,702).

Many reported ‘pressure’ to justify their impairment and support needs, communication and accessibility barriers, emotional impacts related to lengthy or difficult assessment, and questions ‘not capturing the realities’ of their everyday lives. Neurodivergent people were strongly represented among respondents.

“Words like ‘humiliated’, ‘stressed’, ‘anxious’, ‘disbelieved’, and ‘treated like a fraud’, were consistent in almost every response that we had,” says Charlotte.

“People were going in worried about what was going to happen. Some felt unprepared, some left feeling they hadn’t been able to say what they wanted to say, and some said if felt like they were being tricked.”

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As one individual said: “The whole process feels like it is set up to catch you out and to deny you PIP.”

According to Difference North East the high levels of PIP claimants in the region reflects the higher levels of long-term ill health, disability and deprivation. PIP is a ‘lifeline’ for many people here, who would lose their independence without it.

“It wasn’t a surprise to me when I saw that the number of people claiming had gone up, as everything else around them has declined over the past decade,” Charlotte adds.

“Disabled people value PIP. Its the system that isn’t working for anybody.”

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What I thought was one story—about sewage spills the public knows about — took a turn when campaigners told me the bigger issue is actually the pollution risks we aren’t alerted to.

I put these concerns to the Environment Agency and Northumbrian Water, and found myself taking a deep dive into what goes on when it comes to the monitoring and reporting of pollution to the public — and where data and transparency is still lacking.

In the first of what will be a series of articles looking closer at the challenges facing the River Tees, I attempt to break this down in the full story below.

A major sewage spill into the River Tees after a burst main saw swimmers warned not to bathe at popular dipping spots all down the coast, while Northumbrian Water worked to remove “several thousand tonnes worth of material” from the top of the pipework.

It led to the Environment Agency issuing a pollution alert for the whole of Tees Bay, and a no-swim notice issued on Sunday 29 June —after the pipe was reported to have burst on Friday 26th— which remained in place until Tuesday 7 July.

In a statement, Northumbrian Water said the damage caused to its Cargo Fleet Lane sewage main was “likely” to have been caused by a third party and inquiries are ongoing.

National figures suggest the water company spilled sewage into the UK’s waterways more than 27,760 times in 2025, for a total of 123,521 hours.

But following recent reports of ‘raw sewage’ in the sea at Saltburn, swimmers falling ill, and ‘visible foam’ floating down the River Tees, campaigners told The Teesside Lead that the bigger concern may actually be the spills that the public doesn’t know about.

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Muddying the water

Storm overflows are licensed to discharge sewage periodically, and since 2025 water companies have been required to install Event Duration Monitors (EDMs) at these locations to publish near real-time data, including the location, duration and recent history.

Northumbrian Water said the number of storm overflow discharges in the region has reduced by over a third, down from 40,792 in 2024, with the duration of spills decreasing by 50%.

According to John Reeve, of Surfers Against Sewage Saltburn, there are “major holes in the data” and current monitoring and public information systems don’t always give residents a complete picture of pollution affecting the region’s rivers and coastline.

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The organisation monitors spills through its own database, which is fed by data taken directly from the National Storm Overflow hub (NOSH).

“We’ve already demonstrated locations where monitoring systems weren’t accurately recording what was happening,” Reeve tells Teesside Lead.

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I’ve been busy working for BBC Radio Tees and BBC Radio Newcastle. A report I made about Northumbrian Water’s plans for a discharge pipe for treated wastewater to be built into the North Sea off the coast of Redcar was broadcast on Monday (listen here), and the very next day people were told not to swim after a sewer started leaking straight into the Tees. Talk about timing.

The best way to support our work is to subscribe for free and get each edition sent in full to your inbox each Sunday.

If you have any stories you think we should stick our noses into, get in touch via teesside@thelead.uk.

Thanks as always for reading.

Leigh

If a power station explodes and nobody hears it, does it make a sound?

It’s not a question you normally have to ask yourself. Of course it does. BANG! But I’ve been left scratching my head over the last few weeks after making a discovery on Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council’s planning portal. I’m certain it happened, but nobody else is talking about it.

At some point - probably last winter - the world’s largest purpose-built biomass power plant exploded.

The Tees Renewable Energy Plant (also known as Tees REP), situated on the banks of the River Tees at Teesport (how many times can we fit the word ‘Tees’ into a single sentence?), has encountered multiple issues since construction was complete in 2022. There were problems in testing and getting the site online (that is, producing electricity) from day one. I was told at one point, three years ago, the plant’s boiler had been sent to Denmark to be repaired.

These delays in operations have caused massive financial consequences for the plant’s owner, MGT Teesside, which is itself owned as a joint venture between Danish pension group PKA and Australian financial giant Macquarie.

Tees REP is a tenant of PD Ports, but Macquarie also has an interest in the neighbouring Teesworks site.

Long-time readers of The Teesside Lead will be familiar with Macquarie as the company which paid £90m in cash to Teesworks Ltd for a 40-year lease on the SeAH Wind site, which it then leases to the public Tees Valley Combined Authority at a cost of £3.65m a year. SeAH Wind has itself entered huge operational problems before producing a single product, laying off half of its staff this year. If SeAH goes under it leaves the public sector on the hook for huge amounts for decades to come.

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SeAH became tenants of their plot at the last minute after GE cancelled plans for Teesside in favour of relocating to Humberside. Anthropic are due to build the proposed Teesworks datacentre only because Google pulled out.

Is this whole plot of land cursed to failure?

MGT Teesside’s latest accounts, for the year to March 2025, show a loss of £298m. That follows losses of £226m in 2023-24 and £219m the year before that. The huge losses are largely because of impairment charges on fixed assets, meaning a huge loss in value of the power plant itself.

However, revenue increased from £42m to £195m in the latest set of accounts.

Those accounts describe the plan for “full commercial operation” to begin in the second half of 2025. At full capacity the plant could generate 299MW of power, enough for 600,000 homes (or basically all of Teesside).

But that “full commercial operation” came to a halt last year.

It’s the sort of you-couldn’t-make-it-up misfortune that’s plagued the site since the early days of operational delays. Two different restructures of the business have taken place over the last few years to raise an additional £165m in cash to maintain it as a going concern.

Emergency fundraising took place in summer 2023, with most jobs at the site being lost, while parent company MGT Teesside raised £85m in cash with a corporate restructure of its own in late 2024.

As part of that particular restructuring, MGT Teesside renegotiated its deal with Enviva, the US company which manufactures and ships the biomass pellets to Teesside for burning.

In May this year MGT Teesside left a public breadcrumb of acknowledgement that something else had gone wrong at the beleaguered power plant. They applied to the local council for permission to demolish two silos at the plant which were “damaged in an under-pressure event.”

Redcar Council told MGT Teesside they in fact didn’t need planning permission to go ahead with the demolition, perhaps negating the need for the company to have left a public record of the incident. Everybody I’ve spoken to seems to be in denial about it, though.

Stockton-based px Limited was chosen as the power plant’s operator around 18 months ago. They refused to comment on the apparent explosion at their site, saying only that they “do not comment on the details of site-specific operational issues or incidents.”

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The Health and Safety Executive say they haven’t been informed of any safety-related incidents at the site.

A freedom of information request to Cleveland Fire Brigade shows they were only called to the plant on one occasion in 2026, which narrows down the date of the “under-pressure event” to some time at the end of 2025.

The fire brigade were called to Tees REP on 19 May - less than two weeks after the application to demolish the silos was made - to deal with “a fire at top of generator at silo”. Six fire appliances attended, and it took around 21 hours for them to get the incident under control.

The work on demolishing the two silos was expected to begin this week, and is planned to last until the end of September. The two damaged silos will be removed and their concrete bases left in order to potentially re-build them at a future date.

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Elsewhere in Teesside…

There was a great article in this week’s FT from Chris Smyth and Jen Williams who visited Hartlepool. She looks at the fact £96m of regeneration money has been spent in the town, but it meant nothing at the ballot box for incumbent parties, with Reform surging ahead. You can read that here.

Meanwhile problems with TVCA’s accounts continue to rumble on, with a member of the scrutiny committee worried the issue is being “kicked into the long grass”. You can read the write-up on that meeting here.

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At long last, a new edition of The Teesside Lead to garnish your inbox.

You’ll remember there hasn’t been an edition in a few months as I’ve been pulled away by other work, notably on BBC Radio Tees and BBC Radio Newcastle where you will have been able to hear me reporting and reading your hourly news bulletins.

Thank you so much for your patience and continued support while we’ve been catching our breath and re-evaluating what it is we do and how we go about it.

And I want to emphasize the “WE”. I’m joined by my new co-editor, Sarah Sinclair. A fellow freelance journalist, Sarah wrote my favourite article in The Teesside Lead from the time before I joined. You can read that here.

We’ll be working together to bring you more in-depth storytelling and exclusive stories from across Teesside.

I’ll let Sarah introduce herself in her own words…

I’m an award-winning journalist based in the North East. My freelance work, which focuses on health and drug policy, has appeared in publications such as Forbes, WIRED, BBC Science Focus, The Telegraph, The i Paper and of course The Lead!

Like many journalists, I started my career in local news, and was formerly a specialist reporter at the Sunderland Echo and Shields Gazette. If there is one thing that has stayed with me from this time, it’s a belief in the importance of high-quality, independent news sources that serve local communities (which is why I have long followed and enjoyed Leigh’s work with The Teesside Lead!) I’m all about stories that have real people at the heart of them, as you’ll hopefully see in some of my previous reporting from Teesside here and here.

We’re already working on the next edition, which should be with you next Sunday. As always, do get in touch with any tips or stories via teesside@thelead.uk.

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You may have seen a story last week about plans by Northumbrian Water to build a 4km outfall pipe from its Bran Sands treatment plant into Tees Bay. Long time readers of The Teesside Lead will have known about this story for eighteen months, since it was us who broke the story way back in December 2024.

You can read about how Northumbrian Water doesn’t actually want to build the outfall pipe below…

Thanks for being patient and we look forward to being in your inbox again on Sunday.

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Hello! If you’re paying attention you will have noticed your email inbox is bereft of The Teesside Lead over the last few weeks.

Due to the joys of freelance life I’m currently having to take an enforced break from putting together the newsletter twice a week because there just isn’t enough time in the day. I’d reached a point where I was working 18-hour days and something had to give.

Subscriptions have been paused, so you won’t be charged this month.

There’s no firm date on when the next edition of The Teesside Lead will be published, but hopefully it will be back over the next few weeks. If you really can’t bare to miss me, you’ll be able to hear me popping up on BBC Radio Tees and BBC Radio Newcastle every now and then.

He becomes the fifth Reform councillor on the council, with only one of those fighting an election in May.

If you want to support my work as an independent journalist covering Teesworks and Tees Valley issues, it’s free to subscribe to The Teesside Lead. If you’re able to stretch, an annual sub is only £49.

If you have any stories, tip-offs or feedback, let me know. I’m not accountable to shareholders or advertisers, just you, the reader.

Get in touch at teesside@thelead.uk or via Bluesky.

Thanks as always for reading,

Leigh

A Hartlepool councillor has joined Reform UK, despite the party’s plans to take away his right to vote in general elections.

Cllr Aaron Roy resigned from the Labour Party this week. An Indian citizen, Cllr Roy moved to the UK in early 2020. As a commonwealth citizen with a UK visa, he has the right to vote and stand in UK elections. Earlier this month, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said his party would stop commonwealth citizens from voting in general elections.

He said: “Commonwealth voting was never really a problem until the age of mass immigration.

“It has now been impacting on our elections for a very, very long time.

“I do believe for national elections they should be voted in by British voters only... otherwise we get a really very, very perverse influence on our politics.”

Cllr Roy said the Labour administration’s increase of council tax in Hartlepool - despite a pledge to freeze it - was the main reason for leaving the party. It was not “an easy decision”, he said, “but it is one made on principle”.

Hartlepool Council raised council tax bills by 1.98 percent this month via the adult social care precept, while freezing the core council tax charge. In neighbouring County Durham, the Reform-led council has increased council tax by 1.99 percent this year.

The NHS nurse was revealed as a member of Reform UK on Thursday evening as Nigel Farage launched the party’s local election campaign in Sunderland.

On resigning from Labour, Cllr Roy said: “I will continue to serve the residents of Hartlepool, with integrity, accountability, and the courage to ask difficult questions when necessary.”

At the Reform event on Thursday evening, Cllr Roy said his ideology and values had “not changed”. “My commitment to the people of Hartlepool has not changed, what has changed is the platform through which I am continuing to do that work.”

Aaron Roy was elected as a Labour councillor representing the Hart ward in 2024, and is up for re-election in 2028. The other two councillors in Hart are Conservative John Leedham, and Reform UK’s Rob Darby.

He was elected at the same time as Labour councillor Quewone Bailey-Fleet, with the two becoming Hartlepool’s first minority ethnic councillors. After his defection, she was excoriating in her criticism.

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However, it does mean I can be the first to bring you the news that TVCA intends to funnel £100m of government money awarded to improve transport across the region to the development corporation which is overseeing the Teesworks project.

If you want to support my work as an independent journalist covering Teesworks and Tees Valley issues, it’s free to subscribe to The Teesside Lead. If you’re able to stretch, an annual sub is only £49.

If you have any stories, tip-offs or feedback, let me know. I’m not accountable to shareholders or advertisers, just you, the reader.

Get in touch at teesside@thelead.uk or via Bluesky.

Thanks as always for reading,

Leigh

More than 10 percent of £1bn in government money, which was due to be spent on transport projects across the Tees Valley, will instead be given to the public body which is overseeing the redevelopment of the Teesworks site.

Board papers for the South Tees Development Corporation’s (STDC) cabinet meeting, which is due to take place next Monday (30 March), show its parent Tees Valley Combined Authority (TVCA) has sought permission from the Department for Transport to give £100m of a £978m government grant to the development corporation.

The government grant, known as CRSTS2 funding, has been long-celebrated by Conservative mayor Ben Houchen as a “billion pounds” of spending that he secured from Government. It was initially announced by the previous Conservative government, but was put on hold by the incoming Labour administration before being approved again last year.

A report will be given to TVCA’s cabinet at their next meeting in June, with council leaders expected to approve the transfer of funds.

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It’s free to support The Teesside Lead, just click to subscribe for free, or share the articles you read!

Get in touch if you have any story tips at teesside@thelead.uk or via Bluesky.

Leigh

Yesterday the Chancellor announced £1.7bn of extra funding to accelerate growth in the North of England. Funds were allocated to mayoral combined authorities in Greater Manchester, Liverpool, West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire and the North East. That is, the North East Combined Authority, not the region. Tees Valley was not given additional funding.

Rachel Reeves also announced she would be consulting with mayors ahead of her Autumn budget speech to give mayors more fiscal devolution. Watch this space to see if that includes Ben Houchen.

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Teesside’s long, proud history as a centre for the chemical industry could be one step closer to ending, as another site at Wilton near Redcar threatens to close.

The Huntsman chemical factory, which is one of the last remaining parts of what was ICI, could become a victim of high energy prices caused by the war in Iran.

Chairman and CEO, Peter Huntsman, said: “If today’s economics were to stay in place for the next three months, I would shut down my [UK] facility and I’d be importing product from China or the United States.”

He added that raw materials in the UK were between five and seven times more expensive than elsewhere. The plant produces aniline, a chemical with countless uses in manufacturing.

“Four years ago, my lowest cost aniline in the entire world came from the UK. That’s how recently I was competitive,” said Huntsman. “Right now, this week, it is the most expensive.”

Huntsman’s factory employs around 80 people.

It was confirmed at the start of this year that AEQUITAS had bought SABIC’s chemical plant at the Wilton site, after their Olefins cracker was closed last year. Around 300 people work at that site.

Peter Huntsman said the UK and EU were uniquely exposed to volatile energy prices. “You’re not seeing this in China, America or the Middle East, surprisingly, where the war is,” he said.

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Sometimes you have to take pleasure in the little things, don’t you?

Today’s edition of The Teesside Lead involved me combing through more than 350 pages of TVCA documents which were released on Friday.

If you want to support my work (and sanity) please sign up to get The Teesside Lead delivered to your inbox for free twice a week. It’s also free to share, and an incredibly powerful way of giving independent journalism a boost.

If you’re able to, a paid subscription is £49 a year.

Get in touch if you have any story tips at teesside@thelead.uk or via Bluesky.

Leigh

You may remember the case of the Darlington nurses who took their NHS trust to an employment tribunal over the fact a trans colleague of theirs was allowed to use a female dressing room. I wrote about the Islamophobic, anti-Semitic, fundamentalist Christians who backed their cause. Katherine Denkinson has written a deep dive into the group on The Lead’s national title.

The Lead

Christian Concern: Inside the rise of a powerful evangelical lobby

In January this year, controversial lobby group Christian Concern made headlines after their clients purportedly won a court case against Darlington NHS Trust…

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5 months ago · 16 likes · Katherine Denkinson and The Lead

Tees Valley mayor Ben Houchen is considering scrapping two regeneration bodies he set up only three years ago. Hartlepool and Middlesbrough Development Corporations are facing the axe, with the former in financial difficulties and the latter losing investors for its flagship project.

According to board papers for this Friday’s Tees Valley Combined Authority (TVCA) Cabinet meeting, Lord Houchen “intends to review the requirement” of the regeneration bodies, and that funding from Middlesbrough Development Corporation (MDC) would be transferred to Hartlepool’s if one is scrapped and the other kept.

Hartlepool Development Corporation (HDC) needs a £1m boost to its funds in order to present a balanced budget for the next financial year. The development corporations were given £10m each by TVCA when they were set up.

HDC is facilitating the £13.8m redevelopment of Middleton Grange shopping centre and the former Binns department store building, with Hartlepool Borough Council. This is funded by the previous government’s Town Deal funding

MDC, meanwhile, suffered calamity when its flagship Crown Square redevelopment project in Gresham was put on hold due to concerns over its viability.

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Last year Lord Houchen stood down as chair of both development corporations after TVCA was issued a Best Value Notice by the government over concerns relating to the authority’s ability to deliver value to taxpayers. That was followed by new government guidelines which said devolved mayors, like Houchen, should not chair development corporations.

The Cabinet meeting papers lay out the reasoning behind Lord Houchen’s review of the development corporations is that new legislation - the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill, which has nearly finished its journey through Parliament - will provide elected mayors with more powers over planning.

In a joint interview which was published around the same time as the meeting papers, Lord Houchen and Middlesbrough mayor Chris Cooke put on a united front, with the pair saying there was a need to assess whether a development corporation was the “right vehicle” for taking forward the town’s regeneration.

Chris Cooke, and the rest of Middlesbrough’s Labour councillors, were dead against the establishment of the MDC, calling it a “smash and grab” of the town’s assets. After the council voted against its establishment, then-secretary of state Michael Gove set up MDC a few days later anyway, a move described by Andy McDonald MP as “a serious denial of democracy”.

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It’s free to subscribe to The Teesside Lead, and it’s also free to share links to my work. If you’re able to, a paid subscription is only £49 for a year. Thanks to everybody who supports my work as a freelance journalist in any way that you can!

If you have anything you want me to poke my nose into, get in touch at teesside@thelead.uk or via Bluesky.

Leigh

It was reported at the end of last week that Tees Valley Combined Authority needs to increase its funding by nearly 80 percent in order to address how understaffed mayor Ben Houchen’s office is.

Expenditure on staffing in his office is set to rise from £263,000 to £452,000 in the next financial year, if approved.

The last twelve months has seen expert local government troubleshooters brought in to right the TVCA ship. The fact they’ve quickly identified a desperate need to increase headcount - to nearly double the wage bill - exposes how under-resourced TVCA has been from the start, as well as how inexperienced in local government its senior leadership has been for it not to have identified the issue sooner.

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“This is their home! It is, it’s their home. They’re coming home!”

I’m stood at the mouth of the Wansbeck estuary in Northumberland. The temperature is -2°C, the wind is biting and it’s drizzling sideways.

Dr Martina Bristow is on her hands and knees in the sandy sediment. Her excitement is contagious.

She’s planting seagrass in a small-scale pilot to see if it can grow at this location in an effort to fight coastal erosion. I met her for the first time two days earlier in Hartlepool.

At the Tees Estuary Restoration Initiative - known as TERI for short - the Tees Rivers Trust is working to repopulate the local area with oysters and mussels, farming the shellfish in huge tanks on a piece of derelict land at the docks. Inside shipping containers, on shelves you’d have in your garage, plastic trays of water sit, with pumps whirring beneath them and bright lights above them.

In this seagrass nursery the plant is being grown from seed for different pilot projects which are attempting to regrow it around the north east coast.

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Martina works on the Stronger Shores project, one of 25 projects in England to benefit from a share of government funding to explore new ways to fight flooding and coastal erosion.

The UK government expects one in four English homes will be affected by flooding due to climate change in the next 25 years, and seagrass is being explored as a possible solution.

“So back in 2024,” Martina tells me, “I went with Tees Rivers Trust to help them collect some wash up seagrass. And that’s basically pieces of the plant that have become uprooted and they’ve just washed along the shore.

“So when we collected that, we were looking for pieces of seagrass that had spades that had seeds inside so that we could collect those seeds and Tees Rivers Trust would then rot down the plant material, get those seeds out, separate them and plant them and grow them at their nursery. So it’s been growing at the nursery for just over a year now.”

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Meanwhile, as always, if you want to support my work at The Teesside Lead, the easiest way to do that is by sharing it online. The next easiest way is to subscribe for free to get updates on Tees Valley news twice a week straight to your inbox. If you’re able to, an annual paid subscription is only £49.

Get in touch if you have any story tips at teesside@thelead.uk or via Bluesky.

Leigh

🏭 After the sale of Hartlepool’s Liberty Pipes was confirmed a couple of weeks ago, the international buyer has been announced as Corinth Pipeworks.

The Greek company was one of four companies, along with Liberty, to be awarded a share of a £4bn contract to provide pipes for the Northern Endurance Partnership carbon capture scheme which aims to capture carbon emissions from Teesside and the Humber and store them beneath the North Sea.

Corinth bought the Hartlepool business, where around 200 people are employed, for £10m.

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🗳️ Redcar and Cleveland Council is about to have its first councillor representing Restore Britain. The fledgling group - still awaiting its application to become a political party to be approved by the Electoral Commission - was started by Rupert Lowe MP after he was kicked out of Reform UK.

Since its launch the party has seen support from ethnonationalists, racists and Elon Musk.

Jack Symon, who’s represented the Wheatlands ward on the council after his election in 2023 as a Conservative, will sit as an independent until the party’s formal approval by the Electoral Commission.

Asked why he didn’t join Reform UK, he said he “did not think they had what it takes to be unpopular”.

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Planning permission has been granted by Stockton Council for Teesworks boss Chris Musgrave’s redevelopment of the former Judges hotel in Yarm.

Councillors voted through the Kirklevington Hall project at a planning meeting on Wednesday. That’s despite concerns raised by council officers about the need to build houses that otherwise wouldn’t be granted permission, in order to fund the scheme.

Phase 1 of the project, which is a joint venture between Musgrave and Kymel (who own Trenchers in Whitby as well as the Lord Crewe Arms in Northumberland and various other hospitality businesses across the North East), will see redevelopment of the hotel. To fund this, 26 residential self-build plots on the estate, in an “exclusive” gated community will be sold.

According to the planning application, the sale of these plots will bring in 70 percent of the c. £14.5m needed to fund the first phase. The remainder will come from private investment, presumably from Kymel.

These houses are what’s known as an “enabling development”.

In instances like this, planning guidelines state the lowest possible number of houses in an enabling development should be built.

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In the council officers’ report to the meeting, it says “despite requests to be provided there are no full and detailed costings”, meaning evidence wasn’t supplied to say whether or not the 26 houses were the minimum needed to enable the hotel’s redevelopment.

The applicants also argued that without selling the land for homes they wouldn’t be able to leverage the required lending of the remaining 30 percent of capital needed to pay for the rest of the redevelopment of the hotel.

At the meeting, Conservative councillor Tony Riordan said he thought the application felt “almost back to front. The hotel should come first.”

In assessing the impact of the housing cutting up the historic estate, the report says: “The development of the houses will have a negative impact on the setting of the Hall and erode the important parkland setting.”

In conclusion, the report recognises “that there is conflict with some policies of the current Local Plan and harm will arise from the proposed housing to the landscape character of setting of the non-designed heritage asset”.

Despite this, it encourages approval of the plans because of the economic benefits the developers promise to bring, which include 200 jobs being created by the first phase.

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Local Labour councillors had promised not to raise council tax, and are claiming that they haven’t, which is sort of true, but not true at the same time. Hopefully this edition of The Teesside Lead can explain what that’s all about.

If you want to support my work just sign up for a free subscription to get The Teesside Lead into your inbox twice a week. If you’re able to support financially, an annual sub is just £49 and gives you full access to every edition.

The best way to support, is by sharing the stories you read here.

Get in touch if you have any story tips at teesside@thelead.uk or via Bluesky.

Leigh

Hartlepool Borough Council has approved its budget with a 1.98 per cent increase to the amount of council tax paid by residents, after adjourning its previous meeting in order to seek more funds from Westminster.

The planned spending for 2026-27 was unanimously approved on Tuesday by the council, despite the Labour administration previously promising to freeze council tax. On a technicality, the amount of council tax has been frozen, but the 1.98 per cent increase will come through the adult social care precept.

Councillors from Hartlepool met with government minister Steve Reed MP last week to argue their case for an extra £3m of funding from Whitehall in order to balance their books, but on Monday the Guardian revealed the out come of the disastrous meeting.

Council leader Pamela Hargreaves told the paper that Mr Reed had shown “arrogance, indifference and moral bankruptcy” towards children in social care.

According to Cllr Hargreaves, Reed said the government would not “reward councils for having high numbers of children in care” and then “dismissed” the discussion by saying: “That’s life.”

“That comment tells you everything,” said Hargreaves. “Shrugging at abused and exploited children is not policy, it is moral bankruptcy.”

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government disputed the characterisation of the meeting, saying: “He absolutely did not say ‘that’s life’ in response to being asked about funding for children in social care as is suggested, and never would.”

Speaking to BBC Radio Tees, Cllr Hargreaves said their argument “kind of fell on deaf ears, which is very sad.

“But what we’ve managed to do locally is take that on the chin and we’ve worked with out financial team and we’ve managed to balance a budget.”

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If you want to support my work just sign up for a free subscription to get The Teesside Lead into your inbox twice a week. If you’re able to support financially, an annual sub is just £49.

The best way to support, is by sharing the stories you read here.

Get in touch if you have any story tips at teesside@thelead.uk or via Bluesky.

Leigh

Last Sunday’s edition saw me take a look at what was happening with Council Tax across the Tees Valley, with Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council set to vote on their budget later in the week.

A 4.99% increase in Council Tax was approved with 32 councillors voting for, one against and 19 abstaining. The majority of those abstentions came from the Conservative group who shifted their position from opposed at the last minute.

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You may have woken up on Friday morning rolling over to look at your phone and expecting to see the result of the Gorton and Denton by-election. If this was you, you might be interested to see The Lead’s Zoë Grünewald has written up an excellent analysis on the result as the sun came up over Manchester.

The Lead

Gorton and Denton by-election: The silent majority isn't silent, and it isn't Reform

The result in Gorton and Denton last night has ripped British politics apart…

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6 months ago · 31 likes · 4 comments · Zoe Grunewald and The Lead

Tees Valley Combined Authority has paid at least £39,500 to financial consultants it has hired to help review poor bookkeeping that’s lead to the authority not publishing accounts for the last two years.

In December, I reported that TVCA’s auditors had warned concerns around governance and value for money at the authority remained, despite claims to the contrary. They were due to report their audit to February’s meeting of the Audit & Governance Committee, but have been unable to conclude the audit, missing the deadline.

It means TVCA has now missed the deadline to publish its accounts for two years in a row, with those for 2023-24 remaining unpublished.

Auditors EY said there was an “inability to locate key accounting records” at the authority.

“Challenges included difficulty in obtaining appropriate schedules, listings and breakdowns for balances within the Statement of Accounts,” they wrote, “for example balances as at 31 March 2025, rather than details of movements between 1 April 2024 and 31 March 2025 and a detailed fixed asset register, rather than listing of expenditure costs capitalised.”

Alarmingly, loan agreements between TVCA and the South Tees Development Corporation (STDC), which has oversight of the Teesworks project, were unsigned, meaning their terms were not legally enforceable.

In relation to STDC and the Teesworks project, EY said they raised concerns around “the accounting for the sale and leaseback and operating agreement for the New Quay” - that which is adjacent to the SeAH factory at Teesworks. As well as general “accounting for expenditure incurred in relation to the Teesworks site”.

After raising these concerns, EY were told by interim financial chief Jo Moore that “there was a reasonable probability that material misstatement existed within the draft financial statements” in relation to these concerns. TVCA promised to provide EY with a review by the end of November 2025, but when they were unable to unpick the financial mess by this date, they promised to provide an update to the auditors by mid-January this year.

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The LondonCentric newsletter had a story on Sunday about one of London’s biggest landlords starting a mass-eviction of potentially thousands of tenants in the capital. Yesterday it had a follow-up story - the evictions had been halted following political pressure as a result of their reporting.

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The reason I bring this up is because LondonCentric’s story would have had absolutely zero impact if it wasn’t for its audience sharing it. A journalist can shine a light on something, but the audience’s response is the mechanism by which we speak truth to power. After all, without your support of The Teesside Lead, I’m one man howling into the online winds.

So thank you for supporting The Teesside Lead. And check out the other Lead newsletters covering Blackpool, Lancashire, Southport, Calderdale, or the newly-launched Valleys Lead covering south Wales - especially this superb work yesterday by my colleagues in Lancashire who exposed this social media post by the deputy leader of the Reform-run local council and there’s now national pressure for him to be suspended and the party nationally to investigate. It’s really powerful how we at The Lead can take local stories and put them in front of a national audience too.

If you’re further afield, find your local journalism newsletter and support them - The Manchester Mill, The Ferret, The Will Hayward Newsletter, The Edinburgh Minute, The Sheffield Tribune…The list goes on. Local journalism isn’t dead, but because it’s not delivered by the paperboy to your front door any more audiences need to boost us and share our stories.

If you want to support my work just sign up for a free subscription to get The Teesside Lead into your inbox twice a week. If you’re able to support financially, an annual sub is just £49.

The best way to support, as mentioned, is sharing the stories you read here.

Get in touch if you have any story tips at teesside@thelead.uk or via Bluesky.

Leigh

On the subject of supporting hyperlocal newsletters… You may have seen a story on the BBC News website this week about the Darlington nurses tribunal. The headline read: “Trust spent £603k on trans changing room tribunal”.

If you’re a regular reader of The Teesside Lead, you wouldn’t have been surprised by that headline at all, given the information was first reported here on the 18th January. The full total - which was in that January article, and not in the BBC’s - is £603,188.23.

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A mystery buyer has bought Liberty Steel’s Hartlepool plant, just weeks after it was put up for sale.

GFG Alliance, the ultimate parent company of Liberty Steel, announced on 30 January it was looking for a buyer of its Hartlepool business, which manufactures steel pipes, and for the deal to be complete by 20 February.

The company has confirmed “a major global pipe manufacturer has been selected as the buyer”, following what it says was “healthy and competitive interest from various investors”.

The buyer’s identity remains secret until the conclusion of public company clearance - this is a process by which the buyer notifies HMRC of the purchase in order to be clear on potential tax issues related to the sale.

Liberty Pipes (Hartlepool) Ltd - the company which has been sold - employs around 200 people at its site on Teesside. Last year the company was issued a winding up order from HMRC due to an unpaid tax bill. This was around the same time GFG Alliance’s other UK steel company, Speciality Steel UK, was put into liquidation after a judge called them “hopelessly insolvent”.

GFG Alliance, owned by Sanjeev Gupta, has been in financial meltdown since the collapse of its main investor, Greensill Capital, in 2021.

The Hartlepool business appears steady as a medium-term concern - it was one of eight suppliers to be awarded a share of £4bn to provide materials for the Northern Endurance Partnership carbon capture scheme.

So far Liberty Pipes has provided 51,000 tonnes of piping for the project, which will see carbon emissions from the forthcoming Net Zero Teesside gas-fired power station (and other carbon emitting businesses on Teesside) captured at source and stored in reservoirs beneath the North Sea.

In a message to workers at the Hartlepool site, Liberty bosses said the transaction had been structured in a way to “protect all stakeholders and ensure the continuation of production at Hartlepool”.

“It safeguards skilled employment and is expected to enhance industrial activity in the region.”

They said “pursuing a change of ownership is a positive move to secure a vibrant and sustainable long-term future for the site”.

Meanwhile, Paul McKenna, National Secretary for Steel at Community Union, said: “We welcome news that the accelerated sales process for the Hartlepool mills has now been completed.

“We look forward to meeting with the new owners and hearing more about their plans for the future of the works. This is a business with excellent facilities and enormous potential, and with the right strategy in place there’s no reason why it shouldn’t have a bright future ahead.”

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If you want to support independent journalism covering the Tees Valley region, please subscribe to The Teesside Lead, it’s free!

I’ll be back with more on Wednesday, feel free to get in touch at teesside@thelead.uk or via Bluesky.

Leigh

Alison Barnes won the Zetland by-election and will join her Liberal Democrat colleagues on Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council.

The contest saw controversy after Reform UK pulled its backing of its candidate Mike Manning following the revelation of racist social media posts.

Barnes won 50.5 percent of the votes, with Labour in second with 21.6 percent and Reform at 13.5 percent. The Green Party and Conservatives each won 7 percent, with the Greens edging ahead of the Tories.

Turnout was 27 percent.

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What could be surer than grass being green and the Pope being Catholic? Council tax increasing every year, of course! Here’s how things look for 2026-27 for council tax payers in the Tees Valley.

Last week saw decisions made at three of the region’s five local authorities on the local tax, with Hartlepool deferring their budget decision, while Redcar and Cleveland council is set to vote on it this coming Thursday.

By law, local authorities cannot increase council tax by 5 percent or more without holding a local referendum on the issue, which is why you see increases of weird amounts each year. For instance, Darlington Council is increasing council tax next year by 4.99 percent.

They plan to make £13m of cuts over the next four years, which includes £3m in the forthcoming financial period. They’ll make the cuts through “back office efficiencies and energy savings”.

Steve Harker, Labour’s council leader, said: “When we campaigned to win the 2023 elections we said we would tackle the £7.5 million annual overspend left by the Tories.

“This budget does just that, balanced over the whole four years.

“It brings to an end the Tory era of massive overspending every single year. It is still challenging, but a significant moment nonetheless.”

The council says Darlington has the second-lowest council tax rate in the North East.

Councillors in Stockton voted through their budget for next year with an increase of council tax of 4.95 percent.

Wednesday night’s meeting saw clashes in the council chamber as Tory councillors accused the Labour administration of creating an “unfair” and “irresponsible” budget to vote on.

Labour’s Paul Rowling, the deputy council leader, said they had to make “difficult and unavoidable choices”. The authority’s total spend next year will total £293.5m, with three-quarters of that figure to be spent on social care, special educational needs or disabilities (SEND) and community transport.

In Middlesbrough there was near-unanimous support for the council’s spending plans for next year, which include only a 2 percent increase in council tax. Only three councillors voted against the budget, with 37 supporting it.

Total spend will total just over £200m, and includes pots for improving equipment in playgrounds, as well as a brand new free pest control service. Great news for residents in the town who have long been battling rodents.

Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council are due to decide their budget in a council meeting on Thursday in a meeting straight after the Cabinet confirms its spending plans.

Proposals include a 4.99 percent increase in council tax. The council also intends to borrow £18.4m in order to balance its books. It comes after making more than £20m in cuts to spending over the last four years. The council describes cost pressures in children’s services as “particularly acute”. It says it has the fifth highest number of children in care nationally.

Hartlepool took a radical step during their budget meeting last week and decided not to vote on their budget, as they believe the new funding settlement for local authorities - decided by the Labour government - isn’t fair.

Labour council leader Pamela Hargreaves moved to defer the decision to allow councillors to “take our case once more to Whitehall” to “fight for our borough and our children”.

“I am devastated because the Labour government we were promised would stand up for us has failed us,” she said at the meeting.

“I do not believe it is right that we respond to this injustice by raising core council tax.”

Council tax is a core issue for the politicians of Hartlepool. And Hargreaves doesn’t have to work very hard to “take the case to Whitehall”, as her husband is Hartlepool MP Jonathan Brash, who is chair of the all party parliamentary group for council tax reform.

The famous argument is that people in Hartlepool pay more in council tax than people in Westminster - one of the wealthiest boroughs in London. Because the levy is calculated on the value of a property in 1991 it means somebody who lives in a home that’s now worth £150,000 in Hartlepool pays more than somebody who lives in an £8,000,000 home in Westminster.

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The government’s new funding settlement for councils is based on the supposition that they all increase council tax by 4.99 percent each year over the next three years of funding, but Hartlepool’s Labour councillors pledged to freeze the tax, meaning the new funding settlement doesn’t have the same impact in Hartlepool as it does elsewhere.

Ms Hargreaves confirmed a meeting with Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government Steve Reed has been confirmed to discuss the issue.

During the council meeting she said: “So tonight we say no. We say no to being ignored, we say no to being treated as an afterthought and no to an unfair taxation system and a process that finds money elsewhere but not for our children.”

The council faces an £8.012m deficit for 2026-27, which reduces to £3.74m if planned savings are implemented.

Legal officers confirmed the council had to set its budget by 5 March.

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Over the last few weeks I’ve been making trips to Hartlepool to see what’s happening as part of huge ecological restoration projects across the north east. You might have heard me yesterday morning on BBC Radio Tees talking about oysters, and in a few weeks you’ll hear me on the World Service following the journey of some seagrass.

Today’s edition is a look into those stories with some extra bits not included on the radio.

If you want to support my work as a freelance journalist subscribe to The Teesside Lead for free (or become a paid subscriber if you’re in a position to), or just as important, share what you read.

If you have anything you want me to poke my nose into, get in touch at teesside@thelead.uk or via Bluesky.

Leigh

🏭 Liberty Steel is hoping to complete the sale of its Hartlepool pipe plant by the end of this week. At the time of press there was no official news, but watch this space. I reported on the urgent sale at the start of this month.

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On a disused patch of land down at Hartlepool’s docks, between the faded grandeur of the town’s red brick buildings and the fishermen’s pontoon, there’s a compound.

Shipping containers are surrounded by palisade fencing topped with razor wire, and security cameras at each corner.

I’m led into one of those shipping containers. The sight as the door creaks open is about as suspicious-looking as you’d expect.

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Along one side of the container there are shelving units up to the ceiling, the sort you’d put up in your own garage. But instead of old tins of paint, each shelf has its own lights along the length of it, shining down onto trays on the shelf beneath. The sound of water pumps whirrs non-stop.

It looks dodgy, but it’s the cutting edge of science. Here at the Tees Estuary Restoration Initiative - TERI - natural solutions are being developed to restore the river and protect it from coastal erosion. It’s a site which is run by the Tees Rivers Trust.

This is TERI’s seagrass nursery, where the marine plant is being grown for different projects across the North East. Many of the plants have been grown from seeds gathered from Lindisfarne, where seagrass meadows still thrive.

The lights and pumps change depending on the time of day, meaning the fledgling seagrass in the trays is only covered in water for half of the day, as it would be when the tide comes in and out. The water itself is pumped into the site from the nearby docks.

Seagrass was common around British shores, but industrialisation, disease and trawling were all factors to contribute to its decline in the twentieth century.

Because of the matt-like structure formed by the plant’s rhizomes and roots beneath the surface of the seabed, it’s thought reintroducing seagrass species will help protect against coastal erosion, as the stronger surface will help dissipate energy in storm or surge events.

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