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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2 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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3 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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Credit to Ray Casey who got the scoop and reported the news of SeAH losing the Hornsea 3 contract for North East Bylines. After my story of SeAH’s CEO being replaced last week, it set him off digging and he found the news hidden in the energy sector trade press.

Incredible what happens when you have a healthy, mutual local media, isn’t it? I’m a big believer in media plurality - all outlets have a different role to play for different audiences, in order to build that bigger, complete picture of what’s actually happening.

As always, if you want to support this particular outlet of local media, it’s free to subscribe! It’s also free to share articles, and that really does have the biggest impact in terms of increasing support for The Teesside Lead.

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

Leigh

🏭 Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council are on the hook for a huge legal bill after refusing planning permission for a waste-to-energy incinerator at Wilton last year, despite an officer recommendation to approve the project. The incinerator’s developers, CSG, have now won their appeal with the Planning Inspectorate, with the inspector awarding costs against the authority. The council offered no evidence during the appeal hearing.

According to the inspector, “the authority acted unreasonably in refusing planning permission in the first instance, as demonstrated by its subsequent decision not to contest the appeal.”

The council confirmed to me the costs will be paid from its revenue budget (ie by council tax payers).

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SeAH Wind had its first order cancelled, after it was unable to provide the monopiles for the Hornsea 3 offshore windfarm. The news comes at the same time it was confirmed the company has replaced its CEO.

A joint statement between SeAH Wind and Danish energy company Ørsted, who ordered the monopiles, said they had “mutually agreed to discontinue monopile production.”

It’s a year this week since King Charles officially opened the SeAH factory at Teesworks, but the company is yet to deliver a single customer order, despite apparently beginning production in July last year.

The contract to deliver the monopiles was officially signed in September 2022, just after construction on the enormous factory at Teesworks began, but production issues and industrial disputes have plagued the project.

Hornsea 3 is set to be the world’s biggest windfarm, and according to the recent joint statement between SeAH and Ørsted the windfarm’s timeline “remains protected and uncompromised,” meaning it’s expected to be operational by the end of 2027 despite SeAH’s failures.

SeAH’s share of the work for the windfarm is believed to have now gone to other companies in Europe, in a blow to the UK’s manufacturing and green energy sectors.

The statement says relieving SeAH of this work allows it to “focus on the safe and reliable delivery of its secured order backlog through to 2027.

“This underlines confidence in SeAH Wind’s technical capability, manufacturing scale, and long-term role in the UK and European offshore wind supply chain”.

The company is set to produce monopiles for both of RWE’s Norfolk Vanguard windfarms, with manufacturing due to begin at its Teesside factory this year.

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SeAH’s factory site is, of course, on the site of the infamous “£100” land deal.

South Tees Development Corporation sold the 90-acre plot in 2022 to Teesworks Ltd (owned by Chris Musgrave and Martin Corney) for less than £100, although a side deal worth £15m related to the purchase had its balance paid off at the end of 2025.

Teesworks instantly sold a 40-year lease on the land to Australian financial firm Macquarie for a cash sum of £90m, meaning an instant profit of £75m which was supposed to be used for future redevelopment of the site. The duo in charge have instead plundered the pot by paying themselves dividends, leaving only £2m left in the company’s coffers.

The complex chain of ownership continues, with Macquarie leasing the site back to Tees Valley Combined Authority for £3.65m a year. TVCA lease it to SeAH for £4.3m a year. If SeAH vanishes, TVCA is still liable to Macquarie for an inflation-linked £3.65m a year.

So far SeAH is the only tenant at Teesworks.

Ben Houchen’s selective omission

The news of SeAH losing its contract with Ørsted came at an incredible moment for people outside the energy sector - the day after the first monopiles for Hornsea 3 arrived at Teesworks… from Spain.

Ørsted had shared the contract for Hornsea 3’s monopiles between SeAH and Spanish company Haizea Wind, who manufactured the six monopiles at their factory in Bilbao.

Tees Valley mayor Ben Houchen celebrated the arrival of the Spanish monopiles on social media, conveniently ignoring the elephant in the room.

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Don’t forget to subscribe for free to get the latest edition sent straight to you twice a week.

I’ve had a few story tips recently, thank you so much to everybody who’s sent them on. Discretion is always assured. If you have anything you want me to poke my nose into, get in touch at teesside@thelead.uk or via Bluesky.

Leigh

In the previous edition I covered strike action being voted on by GMB union members at KP’s Billingham factory. A small addendum to that story is an official statement from KP in response. They said: “We are aware that a small number of GMB‑represented colleagues at our Teesside site have begun Action Short of Strike.

“We value our Teesside team and the important contribution they make, and we remain committed to working constructively with them and the GMB to reach a resolution. Discussions are ongoing, and we continue to encourage open and constructive dialogue to address the concerns raised.

“In the meantime, we have robust contingency plans in place to minimise any potential disruption and to ensure continuity of supply for our customers.”

If you’re interested in my extra-curricular activities, I’ve started a podcast with my mate, the author Peter Mitchell. He wrote the superb Imperial Nostalgia, in which he covers how and why Britain’s complicated history with its past pervades today (eg Brexit, flags on lampposts etc).

We’re going through Herman Melville’s 1851 novel Moby-Dick chapter-by-chapter.

If you want to listen to two bald white men learning through taking the piss, go and listen to The Whale Pod. To give you an example of the tone, in episode two (which is released tomorrow) I suggest JFK’s assassination was a whaling expedition.

🐳🐳🐳🐳🐳

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SeAH Wind moves current boss to South Korea role as Teesworks site cash position revealed

SeAH Wind, the only tenant so far at the enormous Teesworks site, has replaced its CEO, after admitting a weak financial position due to production delays.

The company, which makes monopiles - offshore foundations for wind turbines - announced Chung Ryu as its new chief executive, jumping from his previous role as chief operating officer at sister company SeAH Steel’s manufacturing factory at Suncheon in South Korea.

SeAH Wind said outgoing CEO Chris Sohn would be taking up a new senior position in South Korea within its steel manufacturing business.

Production began at the Teesside factory in July last year, three years after ground was broken on the site. According to SeAH Wind the 90-acre factory site represents a £400m investment in the UK.

They were awarded a contract to provide monopiles for Ørsted’s Hornsea 3 offshore wind farm, which will be the largest offshore windfarm in the world when completed, covering 269 square miles.

However, late last year a spokesperson for the South Korean-owned company told me it had “not delivered a single customer order,” adding that delays to production mean the company has incurred “substantial operating costs” and that it did not expect to reach what it called a “sustainable cash position” until late 2026.

The company became the first tenant at the Teesworks site after a land deal which saw Teesworks Ltd’s private partners given a £90m cash payment in 2022 through a complicated land lease deal on what became the SeAH site. They had paid no money up until that point, and were only liable for a £15m payment connected to the deal which was settled last year.

After the factory was officially opened by King Charles in February the company has been in a number of disputes with the GMB Union and its members. The union achieved official recognition only after a ruling in July from the Central Arbitration Committee, with more than 95 percent of union members voting at that time to strike over a pay dispute.

SeAH said the union’s demands were “not financially viable given [their] current business position”.

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Leigh

Workers at a Billingham factory which produces some of the most well-known snack brands in the country have voted in favour of strike action.

The GMB Union says dozens of its members at the KP Snacks factory are now in consultation over selecting dates to walk out, after a dispute over additional duties it says were imposed without extra pay or consultation.

KP Snacks produces Hula-Hoops, McCoy’s and Pom-Bears, among others.

Among the workers’ complaints are that process workers have had the number of breaks per shift reduced to one. Workers have also raised concerns that operational changes where machinery is left running during breaks could lead to “compromised safety”.

It’s the latest ballot in favour of industrial action at the site by members of GMB. In November 85 per cent of union members voted to down tools in a dispute with management at the factory. GMB said November’s vote to strike could have impacted Christmas supplies of popular snacks.

That vote was in a dispute over additional responsibilities being given to staff without additional pay. The vote would have given members a six-month window in which to take the action, presumably the latest vote is a sign that November’s dispute was resolved.

Workers held a ballot on industrial action in a dispute over pay only three months before November’s decision to strike, meaning a total of three ballots have been held to strike in the space of around six months.

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KP’s Billingham site employs hundreds of staff and is the largest of its factories.

Announcing the result of the latest vote, GMB Organiser Paul Clark said: “These workers are skilled, experienced and absolutely vital to keeping KP Snacks’ production lines running and supermarket shelves stocked.

“The company has unilaterally expanded their roles, increased their workload and expected them to take on additional responsibilities, all without offering a single penny more in pay.

“That simply isn’t fair and this is crunch time for KP Snacks.

“If the company wants to avoid empty shelves and disruption, it needs to return to the table with a serious offer that properly recognises the work these staff do.”

KP have been approached to comment. At the time of November’s ballot to strike they said they “value the Teesside team and the important role they play in producing our products and remain committed to constructive dialogue to find a resolution.”

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Hopefully I will have defrosted in time to deliver another edition for you this Sunday.

Today’s edition sees one of our MPs give his thoughts on the Epstein disclosures and Mandelson, a topic for those who also subscribe to our sister national edition of The Lead will have read more on yesterday in Zoë Grünewald’s powerful writing.

Thanks for reading!
Leigh

🗳️ In the last edition I mentioned Reform UK had withdrawn support for their candidate in the Zetland by-election following the revelation of racist social media posts by that candidate. Now they’re accusing their political opponents of a conspiracy to withhold their accusations in order to leave the party without a candidate in the election. It’s too late for Mike Manning - who has resigned from Reform UK - to remove his name from the ballot. “They made it impossible for us to field a replacement candidate in this by-election,” they said. Both Labour and the Lib Dems called the accusation “nonsense”. A reminder, my colleagues at the national edition of The Lead keep a watching brief on everything Reform is up to.

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Hartlepool MP Jonathan Brash has said his fellow Labour politician Peter Mandelson “undoubtedly is a traitor”.

Mandelson was Brash’s predecessor in Hartlepool, representing the town as its MP between 1992 and 2004 when he stood down.

Mr Brash made his comments in the House of Commons today (4 February). “I stand here acutely aware that I am the Member of Parliament for Hartlepool,” he said. “And I think today I speak for Hartlepudlians when I look at the evidence before us and say undoubtedly that Peter Mandelson is a traitor.”

More than 3,000,000 pages of documents were published by the US Department of Justice last week related to the deceased sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Among them was an email chain in which then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown was copied, which suggests Mandelson was sharing confidential internal government communications during the 2008 financial crisis with Epstein.

In an appearance on GB News yesterday afternoon, Mr Brash said Mandelson’s leaking of that confidential information was “beyond belief”.

He added that Mandelson was “clearly finished in politics”, but that it was “far more serious than that.

“In some respects it’s a tragic end to a political career, but he’s frankly deserving of everything he gets because the revelations today are absolutely appalling.”

When asked if it was treason by presenter Martin Daubney, Brash said it was “inexplicable”, although he used Parliamentary privilege to make the accusation in the House of Commons today.

Mandelson has not responded to any press requests for comment, although it’s understood his position is that he did not act criminally and was not motivated by financial gain.

It’s the latest headache for Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, who today said he was aware the former Hartlepool MP had maintained ties with Epstein after his 2008 conviction for procuring a child for prostitution and of soliciting a prostitute before appointing Mandelson as ambassador to the US.

Starmer says he was “repeatedly” lied to by Mandelson about his relationship with Epstein.

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It’s because of your support I can bring original investigations to life.

The best ways of supporting my work are both free - sign up to get each edition straight into your inbox, and share anything you like. I can’t overstate how much it helps.

If you’re able to, an annual subscription is £49, while a monthly one is £4.99.

Thanks for reading, and thanks to all who get in touch with story tips. Discretion assured, as always! Get in touch at teesside@thelead.uk or via Bluesky.

Leigh

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🗳️ Reform UK pulled their backing for their candidate in a by-election for Redcar and Cleveland Council after he was accused of making “racist, antisemitic, xenophobic” comments on social media. Mike Manning will remain on the ballot for the Zetland ward, which is due to be contested on 19th February. He “profusely” apologised for the comments and resigned from the party, and said if it wasn’t too late he would have withdrawn his candidacy.

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A buyer is being sought for a Hartlepool steel company, which was awarded a key contract for the planned carbon capture scheme at Teesworks.

It was confirmed on Friday that Sanjeev Gupta’s Liberty Steel group is seeking an expedited sale of its Liberty Pipes business in Hartlepool, part of an ongoing process of divestment since the collapse of its main investor, Greensill Capital, in 2021.

Greensill lent £3.7bn to Liberty’s parent company, GFG Alliance, leaving the steelmaking business reliant on the funding and exposed to Greensill when it became insolvent. An investigation by the Serious Fraud Office into the collapse of Greensill began in January 2024.

Liberty’s Hartlepool business has not filed accounts to Companies House since the collapse of Greensill.

It’s not clear whether the future of the business depends on finding a new owner.

Last year Liberty Pipes (Hartlepool) was issued a winding up order by HMRC. Around the same time, the bulk of Liberty’s steel businesses in the UK, Speciality Steel UK, was put into liquidation after a judge called them “hopelessly insolvent”.

The Hartlepool business was separate to this judgement, and its long-term viability appears better on the surface. Last year it started to produce the pipes that will be used to store and transport captured carbon emissions from the Net Zero Teesside power plant at Teesworks.

In just under a year they’ve delivered 51,000 tonnes of pipes for the project.

Despite Liberty’s full order book at Hartlepool, the carbon capture scheme at Teesworks isn’t entirely reliant on them.

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The 50-50 joint venture was handed over to Chris Musgrave and Martin Corney, and they were given the option to buy land for £1 an acre, because they promised to take on responsibility of remediating the polluted steelworks site.

What this story shows is they haven’t done that, and instead are expecting inward investors to Teesside to foot the bill they said they’d pay. And after they paid, they told them to pay more.

In the meantime, they’ve taken £124m out of the project.

As always, if you want to support my work as an independent journalist covering this stuff, the easiest way to do that is by sharing my work. You can subscribe for free, too. A paid sub is only £4.99 a month, or £49 for a whole year.

There’s no point doing this work without an appreciative audience, and I’m thankful to everybody who reads and shares!

Thanks as always for reading,

Leigh

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The majority of Teesworks Ltd was handed to private partners for free on the promise they would take on remediation of the site themselves, but The Teesside Lead can reveal the company was receiving money from BP to advance plans for two hydrogen schemes which were ultimately cancelled.

I originally submitted the FOI request in July last year, but have only just received the information requested after a battle to get it released. It reveals correspondence between BP and Teesworks Ltd which took place in February 2025, in which the energy giant says it cannot commit to paying Teesworks more money until an option agreement for land to be used for its now-cancelled H2Teesside blue hydrogen project was signed.

An email from a senior manager of the H2Teesside project at BP to a contact at Teesworks, sent on 18 February 2025, says: “Martin Corney called me last night… can you shed any light on this one?”.

It appears the call was a demand from Teesworks Ltd for more money than had been agreed.

The email continues by saying BP is “keen to progress” an application with the Environment Agency that would involve re-using waste material from the contaminated site of the former steelworks in the remediation, and that the company wanted to “understand possible remediation acceleration levers”.

Martin Corney and Chris Musgrave are the businessmen and lead shareholders of Teesworks Ltd. It’s thought they’ve received £124m in cash that’s been extracted by the private sector from the project, which has seen more than £550m of taxpayers’ money put in.

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Is it rearranging the furniture on the Titanic, or is there a real sea change coming at TVCA? The authority is about to appoint another expert to help bring in the changes to culture and governance.

If you want to support The Teesside Lead, it’s free to subscribe. Paid subs get a bit more for only £4.99 a month, or £49 a year.

It’s also free to share. I’ve seen a huge amount of new free subs thanks to your word of mouth support. It really means a lot.

Thanks for reading, and thanks to all who get in touch with story tips. Discretion assured, as always! Get in touch at teesside@thelead.uk or via Bluesky.

Leigh

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Tees Valley Combined Authority (TVCA) is hiring a third temporary consultant as it continues its efforts to improve governance and culture.

TVCA’s Cabinet has been advised to approve the appointment of Jeanette McGarry to the role of Interim Monitoring Officer - the authority’s top legal position. She will be taking over from Jodie Townsend, who was appointed to the interim position just six months ago, but will now continue working for TVCA as a consultant.

According to papers for Friday’s Cabinet meeting, the recruitment will “result in increased capacity to continue to implement the governance improvement work at pace and ensure continuity.”

Mr Townsend was appointed as top legal officer and Jo Moore as interim finance director following the sudden departures of Emma Simson and Gary Macdonald respectively from those roles last year.

Both were in their roles during the Tees Valley Review’s investigation and the time period that auditors have refused to sign off on the authority’s accounts for, saying they “considered there to be a reasonable probability that material misstatement exists, potentially in multiple regards”.

Jeanette McGarry is another local authority trouble-shooter whose CV has seen her travel the country over a number of years to steady ships and fix relationships and working cultures at local councils.

If appointed, she’ll be paid £102,600 for her six month tenure at TVCA, although she’ll be responsible for her own national insurance and pension contributions.

TVCA says this is a reduction of £45,630 compared to what it was due to pay Jodie Townsend over that time. However, Townsend will still receive that amount for his continued work as a consultant.

One of the key requests from TVCA chief executive was that McGarry spends most of her time working at TVCA’s offices.

A spokesperson for TVCA told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: “A recommendation to approve the appointment of Jeanette McGarry – an experienced local government officer – to the role of interim monitoring officer for up to six months will be voted on by TVCA Cabinet on January 30. This new arrangement will increase capacity on the governance improvement work while a permanent appointment is selected.

“Jodie Townsend has stood down as interim monitoring officer but will remain in a consultancy role working with the combined authority to support its continued governance improvements. Retaining Jodie in a consultant role will also ensure continuity and a smooth transition to the new interim monitoring officer appointment.”

Job ads for the full time roles for Monitoring Officer and Finance Director have been shared by TVCA, with salaries of £120,000 and £132,234, respectively. The roles are expected to be appointed by the end of March.

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Thanks to all who shared the last edition of The Teesside Lead, it’s lead to a big jump in subscribers to the newsletter, and it’s thanks to your word of mouth.

If you want to support, 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 across the web.

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

Leigh

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✈️Trouble at Teesside International Airport as Serco’s International Fire Training Centre looks set to close. The school has been at the airport since 1981 and teaches specialist firefighting for the aviation and offshore industries. However, owner Serco now says the business has become “no longer viable”. A ten-year deal to keep the school at the airport was signed a little over three years ago. If you want to share any information about the circumstances surrounding the closure, feel free to get in touch!

Tees Valley mayor Ben Houchen met with Reform UK leader Nigel Farage before Christmas, as the latter attempts to woo the most senior directly-elected Conservative to his own party.

The Financial Times reports Houchen was approached by Reform last year, before a meeting was held with Farage and a staff member in mid-December.

After Robert Jenrick’s defection last week the staff member once again approached Lord Houchen, saying Farage wanted to meet him for lunch.

Lord Houchen told the FT he had no plans to change allegiance, saying: “I’ve always been a Conservative. Loyalty is important to me.”

Houchen is the most senior directly-elected Tory in the UK, and his defection would signal a huge boost for Reform. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to see an impact locally, as Conservative party members and activists in Stockton - the real campaigning engine behind much of Houchen’s success in the Tees Valley - would also likely switch.

It might even lead to MP Matt Vickers switching his shade of blue, too.

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Houchen appears to be holding out for a time when the Conservatives, who are currently polling at below 20 per cent, see a resurgence, and a probable merger with Reform.

“It may take five, 10 or 15 years but I believe that the Tories and Reform will come together,” he said. It’s a suggestion he made last Spring, too.

On joining Reform, Houchen said: “Fundamentally, for me it’s economic competence, the way the country’s going, people are going to start looking at their own pockets . . . Once you get to that level of economic scrutiny, Reform doesn’t stack up.”

He seems oblivious to which party set the country on “the way it’s going” that has made people to start “looking at their own pockets”.

For his part Farage told the FT his party “have not reached out [to Houchen]”, which, if true, leaves a question as to who actually approached who.

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