It means you can get full access to the work we do for £39.20 a year instead of £49. That works out at 75p for each regular Sunday edition of The Teesside Lead.

If you can’t (or don’t want to) pay, we’ll continue doing the (award-winning) work we do, but please help us out by signing up for the free version, and sharing links to our work when you can. As I mentioned, nobody else is doing work like this on Teesside, and we’re journalists, not social media marketers, so word of mouth is crucial. If you like us, tell people!

Thank you so much to everybody who’s supported our work over the last two years. Journalism can be a lonely old endeavour sometimes - you click publish and the article you’ve spent weeks working on just vanishes, but seeing a story get shared, spoken about, and make a difference is an incredible reward.

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This week’s edition is a guest post from Tasmin Lockwood, looking into a potential growth area for industry on Teesside - carbon dioxide.

The carbon capture and storage project planned for Net Zero Teesside would see carbon captured at the source its emitted, but there are novel technologies being developed to suck that carbon directly out of the atmosphere.

The old Middlehaven docklands lie beneath Middlesbrough College, making it an apt setting for the launch party of a planned direct air capture (DAC) project, part of a wider initiative to reindustrialise Teesside.

UnionDAC hopes to suck its first tonnes of CO2 out of the atmosphere by 2030 and reach full scale — up to 60,000 tonnes per year — by 2032. The project is a joint venture between Progressive Energy, Airhive, and Mission Zero Technologies. Some 980 million tonnes of DAC-driven carbon removal is needed annually by 2050 for the world to stay aligned with the Paris Agreement, according to the International Energy Agency.

The project likely would sit alongside Net Zero Teesside, tipped to be the world’s first commercial-scale gas-fired power station with carbon capture technology, generating up to 742 MW of electricity, or the equivalent of one million homes, and capturing two million tonnes of CO2 a year.

Business leaders and politicians have long promised to reindustrialise the north east, but execution has fallen short. BP spearheaded Net Zero Teesside but has since rolled back its climate commitments and could sell off some of the project, having already ditched its two local hydrogen projects. Teesside’s long-promised hydrogen cluster is thin on the ground and, to the north, Blyth’s promised battery gigafactory, Britishvolt, collapsed before ground was even broken. That site will now be used for an enormous AI data centre.

Gary Potts saw the effects of this first-hand as the previous principal at Northumberland College, which already had apprentices for Britishvolt when plans crumbled. Now the deputy principal of skills and partnerships at Middlesbrough College, Potts works with businesses to build curriculums and train students with the skills businesses need.

“We’re not training anybody up on a UnionDAC course to get a job specifically,” he said, noting carbon capture skills are really process engineering with sector-specific “nuance” bolted on.

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Did you know it’s two years since I became editor of The Teesside Lead? Time does indeed fly, doesn’t it?

The first article was about a long-gone Conservative MP (who remembers Jill Mortimer?) being summoned to court over an unpaid council tax bill.

Since then, I was the first to break the news that BP had cancelled their HyGreen project at Teesworks, brought the story of the fire brigade’s private company collapsing while owing taxpayers £1.6m, covered every twist and turn as TVCA and Teesworks changing strategy and opposing green energy plans they once invited to the former Redcar steelworks site, and of course the ongoing and seemingly-never-ending saga of TVCA’s financial mess.

I’ve also spoken to former PM Gordon Brown, reported on environmental issues, and so much more. In the last few months, I’ve been joined by the excellent Sarah Sinclair, and I hope you can see the quality of work she does as we push The Teesside Lead forward together, offering exclusive investigations, data-crunching, and features giving voice to people on Teesside who aren’t being platformed elsewhere.

There’s no other outlet in this region providing the journalism we do, and I’m incredibly proud of the work we publish.

To celebrate the newsletter’s second birthday, you can now get 20 per cent off the price of an annual subscription to The Teesside Lead. The offer is only available until the end of September, so don’t wait, click here if you want to take advantage.

It means you can get full access to the work we do for £39.20 a year instead of £49. That works out at 75p for each regular Sunday edition of The Teesside Lead.

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If you can’t (or don’t want to) pay, we’ll continue doing the work we do, but please help us out by signing up for the free version, and sharing links to our work when you can. As I mentioned, nobody else is doing work like this on Teesside, and we’re journalists, not social media marketers, so word of mouth is crucial. If you like us, tell people!

Thank you so much to everybody who’s supported our work over the last two years. Journalism can be a lonely old endeavour sometimes - you click publish and the article you’ve spent weeks working on just vanishes, but seeing a story get shared, spoken about, and make a difference is an incredible reward.

We’ll be back with another edition straight to your inbox on Sunday.

Thanks again!

Leigh & Sarah

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It makes Tees Valley look like an example of good governance.

Last week they published data on an England-wide investigation into council spend on children’s care. They’ve shared the data with The Teesside Lead, and today’s edition builds on that original work from them to look in-depth at what’s happening here.

If you want to support this sort of in-depth research and journalism focusing on the Tees Valley, the easiest way is to get us straight to your inbox for free. The next-easiest way is to share our articles, and talk about us online.

For those of you who are able to, a paid sub gets you full access to our work and stories. To celebrate our second birthday this month, there’s a 20 per cent discount for new paid subs on an annual subscription. Click here to get the discount!

Thanks as always for reading.

Data obtained as part of an investigation by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism has revealed Teesside councils spent almost £20 million placing children in unregistered care settings over the last two years.

The figures, accessed under the Freedom of Information Act and shared with The Teesside Lead, show that Redcar & Cleveland spent £16.4 million on agencies working with unregistered care providers in 2024-25.

This was almost five times higher than neighbouring Middlesbrough, which spent £3.5 million during the same period.

The findings were first published as part of a national investigation by TBIJ into the scale of England’s illegal care industry. Payment records obtained from councils across the country revealed that hundreds of businesses are running children’s homes that are not registered with Ofsted.

Redcar & Cleveland Borough Council spent the third highest amount in England, behind Nottinghamshire County Council (£16.8m) and Kent County Council (£27m).

Providing care and accommodation to a child in a setting that is not registered as a children’s home but should be, is an offence, and these are not subject to the same regulatory oversight and routine Ofsted inspections as registered settings.

Even so, TBIJ identified more than 480 private companies, and around £250m spent on 1,800 placements between 2024-25. Nearly half of the local authorities did not respond to the FOIs, meaning the actual figure could be much higher.

Between April 2025 and March 2026, Ofsted opened 850 cases concerning potentially unregistered children’s homes and supported accommodation. It determined that 710 of these should have been registered, while 120 cases remained unresolved.

Where did Teesside’s £20 million go?

The full data and responses from Redcar & Cleveland and Middlesbrough — the only two Tees Valley councils included in the report — have now been shared with and independently analysed by The Teesside Lead. There is no data for Darlington, Hartlepool or Stockton-on-Tees councils.

The data reveals large sums being paid both to businesses directly providing care and to recruitment agencies supplying staff for children living in unregistered settings.

In Redcar, just four providers — Protective Care Group, Prospero Health and Social Care, Minerva/Forever Care and Thornbury — accounted for almost £13 million, or around four-fifths of the £16.4 million total expenditure.

Records show that in 2024, the council spent £1.4m with private care staffing provider Thornbury for the placement of a single child, and a further £1m in 2025. Middlesbrough, by comparison, recorded a payment of £417,524 for one placement related to Thornbury.

Redcar spent a further £3.7m with the recruitment agency Prospero Health and Social Care, accounting for roughly half of the £7.6m TBIJ identified spent nationally with the company.

Meanwhile, payments to Sunderland-based Minerva/Forever Care rose from £1.29m to £1.51m, despite the number of recorded placements falling from 13 to six.

Redcar & Cleveland Council said unregistered settings were only used when no suitable registered placement was available at the point a child urgently needed somewhere safe to live, particularly where children had complex needs or accommodation was needed at short notice.

It added that any temporary unregistered arrangement is subject to “assessment, management oversight and regular review” and where a child is living in an unregistered setting, it will continue searching for a suitable registered placement and move them “as soon as an appropriate option becomes available”.

In Middlesbrough, more than £1.7m went to the healthcare recruitment agency Bleep 360 over two years, with payments rising from £754,000 in 2024 to £956,000 in 2025, despite the number of recorded placements falling from six to four.

Spending with Unite Care and Support Services also rose from £165,000 across three recorded placements in 2024 to £809,000 across six in 2025.

Middlesbrough Council said where local provision is unavailable, or where a child’s needs are particularly complex, the Council may be required to source specialist placements from independent providers in order to meet its statutory responsibilities.

It said all placement decisions were subject to management oversight and financial scrutiny, with processes in place to review their suitability, quality and cost.

Neither council provided specific explanations for the higher figures, such as how long the arrangements lasted or what level of staffing was provided.

Middlesbrough pointed to occasions when arrangements are made to support a child in alternative accommodation with “intensive staffing arrangements” where it is considered necessary to “safeguard the young person” and no suitable registered placement is immediately available.

Recruitment agencies like Thornbury and Prospero argue that they only supply the staff, and do not operate or manage children’s homes. Ofsted has said that both the local authority that arranges the placement, and the agency that provides the workforce may be liable.

A spokesperson for Thornbury told The Teesside Lead that they couldn’t comment on individual care packages. “We provide specialist healthcare staff and care support, often at short notice and in highly complex situations where an individual’s needs require carefully planned specialist support. We comply with all relevant laws and regulations.”

They added: “Responsibility for accommodation and placement decisions sits with the relevant local authorities and other commissioning organisations”.

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Safeguarding concerns

The TBIJ investigation also revealed that seven of the 14 councils it identified as paying Prospero in connection with illegal placements reported safeguarding complaints concerning its workers. Councils reported at least 44 allegations between January 2024 and April 2026, of which 16 were upheld.

Prospero told TBIJ that an upheld concern does not itself establish that a young person was harmed and said workers undergo enhanced criminal-record checks and mandatory safeguarding training.

Redcar also spent almost £4m on seven placements with Protective Care Group (PCG), which was reported to have employed former soldier Liam Ramsey at an unregistered home operated by the company, despite having a number of previous criminal convictions. Ramsey had neglected a child while working for PCG, and later went on to work for MAP Adventures, where he sexually assaulted a child in his care with another care worker over four hours at an unregistered home in Durham after they gave her alcohol and cocaine. He was jailed in 2025 for 11 years.

In a separate investigation by TBIJ, PCG — which has changed its name to Nova Care Group — was accused of failing to notify the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) of previous incidents of neglect involving Ramsey and providing false references.

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The symptom of a “broken” national social care system

Under the Children Act 1989, councils have a statutory duty to provide any child in their care with appropriate accommodation. But in its annual report 2024-2025 Ofsted found that 91 per cent of local authorities it surveyed often struggle to find suitable homes for children with complex needs. In 2023-24, councils told Ofsted that in 78 per cent of potential unregistered-home cases, the reason for the placement was that they couldn’t find a suitable registered home.

Reports submitted to Middlesbrough’s Children’s Scrutiny Panel in January 2026 highlight ‘sufficiency gaps’ in local authority-run foster homes and residential facilities as a reason for councils relying on external private providers.

The council said the national shortage of registered residential placements, increasing demand for specialist care, and rising provider costs had contributed to “substantial increases” in placement costs and could limit the options available when urgent placements were required.

“Our overriding responsibility is to safeguard vulnerable children and ensure that they receive the support, stability and care they need. Any placement arrangements are made with this responsibility at the forefront of decision-making,” Councillor Luke Henman, Middlesbrough Council’s Executive member for Children’s Services, told The Teesside Lead.

“Councils across the country are often left with no option but to look outside registered provision to support a child - this is a symptom of a broken social care system nationwide.

“In Middlesbrough, we place children and young people in homes that are not yet registered only where it is absolutely necessary and where we are assured appropriate safeguards are in place.”

Meanwhile, a 2025 Ofsted inspection report examining Redcar & Cleveland’s children’s services identified that “historical decisions to close children’s homes have created a legacy of insufficient in-house provision” and resulted in an “increased, and relatively high, use of unregistered settings”. The report noted that the council is seeking to address the “current insufficiency” of placements, but this “will take some time to achieve”.

In the current financial year, 65 per cent of Redcar & Cleveland’s expenditure is on its statutory duty to support vulnerable children and adults.

The authority said it now had a “clear commitment” to increasing registered in-house childcare provision to reduce the need to use “outside bodies”. It is also working with the other North East councils in a “sustained campaign” to increase the number of available foster homes.

‘Profiteering off the backs of vulnerable children’

The substantial variations in payments to these external providers, also raises questions about how costs are being assessed and scrutinised, in a market where demand for specialist placements outstrips supply.

The Competition and Markets Authority’s children’s social-care market study 2022 found that the largest private children’s-home providers were making “materially higher profits and charging materially higher prices” than it would expect.

Its analysis of 15 large providers found children’s-home operators recorded average operating profit margins of 22.6 per cent between 2016 and 2020, and concluded that “competition is not working as well as it should be”.

Ofsted’s annual report for 2025 also raised concerns about “strong profit motive” in the sector and “profiteering off the backs of vulnerable children”. The watchdog said the lack of places for children needing specialist support, had created what it described as a “shadow market”.

Prospero Group Holdings, whose health and social care arm received £3.76m from Redcar & Cleveland across 45 recorded placements in the data analysed by The Teesside Lead, reported revenue of £90.9m in the year ending June 2025.

This was down £25.3m from £116.2m the previous year, while gross profit also fell £8.8m, from £32.7m to £23.9m. Despite that fall, dividends paid by the company more than doubled, increasing from £1.37m in 2024 to £2.98m in 2025.

Middlesbrough Council said it has established processes for reviewing the suitability, quality and cost of placements and “seeks to achieve value for money” whilst ensuring that children’s assessed needs and safety remain the “primary consideration”.

Decisions are not based “solely on cost”, but on securing the “right placement for the child at the right time”.

Redcar & Cleveland council rejected any suggestion that it was knowingly placing children at risk.

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Their deaths have understandably left people angry and led to calls for crackdowns on the youth crime and antisocial behaviour that is all too common in their communities.

But how do you recognise which of those causing the trouble may actually be in trouble themselves? For this week’s edition I spoke to a national charity about its efforts to address rising rates of child criminal exploitation in Teesside.

Before you read on, it’s important to say that police have not released any information at this stage to suggest that child criminal exploitation played a part in the events that led to the fatal A66 crash.

Following the tragic events of recent weeks, Teesside has become linked with crime and disorder to those outside, as videos of torched cars and balaclava-clad men riding electric bikes spread like wildfire across social media. But for those who live on the estates that have suddenly become fodder for tabloid journalists, this is nothing that far out of the ordinary.

One charity which has had boots on the ground across Teesside this summer, says it’s time to look closer at what’s really behind the youth crime and antisocial behaviour that has long blighted these communities.

“What might present as antisocial behaviour might actually be hiding a vulnerable child who’s been exploited,” Louisa McCallion, head of marketing and communications at the Ivison Trust, told The Teesside Lead.

“People don’t necessarily have the understanding to know that’s what it is.”

The charity, which supports parents and carers whose children have been sexually or criminally exploited across the north of England, was commissioned by Cleveland Police to run a pilot programme designed to help members of the public recognise exploitation.

Speaking with parents, community members, safeguarding professionals, schools and statutory partners, it found ‘consistent concern’ about the impact on vulnerable young people across Teesside.

An FOI response shows the force recorded 72 children aged 17 and under flagged as victims of child criminal exploitation in 2023, rising to 111 in 2024, including some as young as 12.

However, a “distrust” of police and “fear of retaliation” can prevent people from sharing information with professionals.

Community Guardians across Hartlepool and Teesside are trained in how to identify the signs of exploitation and given a safe, anonymous route to come forward with intelligence through an independent agency, rather than directly to the police.

Community Guardians can’t be named or identified for obvious reasons, but one participant told the charity that the training had helped them look at their environment “through a very different lens”.

“For me, the project has reinforced how important it is that we do not simply see behaviours at face value,” they commented.

“But instead understand the wider context and the possibility that some of the most vulnerable people in our communities may need support, safeguarding and compassion rather than judgement.”

“Hidden in plain sight”

Home Office estimates show that approximately 15,500 children were identified as at risk or involved in child criminal exploitation in the year 2025, but this is likely to be significantly underreported, according to the charity.

Until the introduction of the Crime and Policing Act 2026, there was no standalone criminal offence of child criminal exploitation. This left “significant gaps” in the ability of professionals to identify and respond consistently to children being exploited by criminal networks, the charity’s CEO, Lindsay Dalton, explained.

A further complexity is that many children don’t recognise themselves as victims due to the grooming, manipulation and coercion that takes place, and may appear to be making voluntary choices, making early identification and intervention difficult.

“We know that children are being coerced and manipulated into organised crime at a prolific rate across the country,” McCallion says.

“One of the greatest challenges is that exploitation is often hidden in plain sight.”

A child may be enticed with a vape, a cigarette or alcohol, or it could be the promise of friendship and fitting in.

“It doesn’t discriminate,” she adds.

“It’s happening to children from all backgrounds, from all areas. They’ll cast a very wide net, and identify an individual child and find the vulnerability in their life.”

A greater awareness and recognition of child exploitation could be one factor behind the increasing numbers of people accessing support through the charity. But that’s not the whole picture, according to Dalton.

“Criminal gangs are becoming increasingly sophisticated in how they identify, groom and control vulnerable children, often using social media and peer networks,” she explains.

“At the same time, factors such as poverty, school exclusion, and poor mental health are clearly impacting. “

Driven by deprivation?

Local safeguarding partnerships have consistently highlighted high deprivation as a core vulnerability that county lines gangs exploit, with rates of poverty across Teesside above the national average.

The latest Department for Education (DfE) Children in Need census revealed that Middlesbrough, where over a third of children are living in poverty, has the highest level of need for social care in the country, while neighbouring Redcar & Cleveland is ranked fifth. Both have some of the highest levels of deprivation nationally.

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Today’s Teesside Lead takes a look at how Andy Burnham’s pledge to solve homelessness by Christmas looks from the perspective of of a Teesside homeless charity.

£442m has been pledged to address the issue, but we dive into the numbers to see what sort of impact it would make, and where it’s likely to be spent.

In yesterday’s national newsletter for The Lead, editor Leigh Jones wrote about how events of the last fortnight have only shown the rest of the country what Teessiders have had to put up with for years.

The Lead

The death of seven people in one night has exposed the dark underbelly of life Teessiders have known for years

Two weeks ago news alerts were sent on apps to millions of us about seven deaths on the A66 between Middlesbrough and Redcar. For many people outside the area huge question marks remain about what’s actually going on thanks to arrests, counterattacks, car r…

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a month ago · 29 likes · 4 comments · The Lead and Leigh Jones

If you want to support our work as independent journalists covering the Tees Valley it’s free to sign up for weekly updates straight to your inbox. And since this month it’s two years of The Teesside Lead we’re celebrating with a 20 per cent discount for new paid subscribers on an annual subscription. Click here to get the discount!

Since entering Downing Street, Andy Burnham has put the UK’s homelessness problem at the top of his agenda, announcing a total of £442 million in funding to end rough sleeping and “get everyone in for Christmas”.

In Teesside, where some rates of homelessness are among the highest in the country, it’s welcome news for frontline workers. But as one charity told The Teesside Lead, getting somebody off the streets is only the first step.

“Everyone in for Christmas”

Homelessness is clearly an issue close to Burnham’s heart.

Rough sleeping fell substantially during his time as mayor of Greater Manchester, thanks in part to his A Bed Every Night initiative.

Now, as Burnham takes on his new role as prime minister, he’s pledged to tackle the issue nationally, with an additional £102m investment on top of the initial £340m announced in July.

This will include £8.4m of new money for the Ending Homelessness in Communities Fund, bringing the total to £47m over three years. Of the total £442m pledged, £10m will be spent in the north east - that’s the whole of the north east from the Tees to the Tweed - covering 12 local authority areas.

Under the plans, everyone sleeping rough will be offered a route off the streets this winter, the government says, with emergency accommodation, practical support, and settled homes for people experiencing long-term homelessness.

Teesside-based charity Cornerstones, which operates homeless hubs with dedicated housing pathways in Hartlepool and County Durham, told The Teesside Lead it’s “over the moon” to see the issue back on the political agenda, but as always the devil will be in the detail.

“Any focus on homelessness and housing is a positive, because we know there is a massive need,” says Nicky Morson, the charity’s communications and support lead.

“But what we’re concerned about is that it’s not just a tick-box exercise. We know it’s possible to get everyone off the street, but that doesn’t mean we’ve solved it.”

Morson is referring to the Severe Weather Emergency Protocol (SWEP), under which councils provide emergency shelter to people sleeping rough during extreme weather, and the ‘Everyone In’ initiative introduced during the Covid pandemic.

In March 2020, the government asked councils to bring people sleeping rough, or at risk of doing so, into emergency accommodation. By November, more than 33,000 people had been helped, with more than 23,000 moving on into longer-term accommodation.

But finding lasting homes proved more difficult. Research by Shelter later estimated that more than three-quarters of those initially accommodated had not moved into settled accommodation by February 2021.

“Emergency accommodation and temporary accommodation is a very short fix,” Morson explains.

“With someone who’s entrenched in rough sleeping and has been for many years... they will initially engage, but due to mental health and other issues, keeping them in the property is the problem.

“Where we really need to be investing money is in the infrastructure behind it, the supported housing, the teams who support people in the properties, and finding out what the issues are that have led to homelessness.”

The local picture

Teesside faces some of the highest and fastest-rising homelessness rates in England.

According to the latest government figures, for every 1,000 households in Middlesbrough, almost five (4.86) were assessed as homeless in the first three months of this year — more than two-and-a-half times the national rate of 1.81 per 1,000, and 2.24 across the North East.

The local authority also saw a 365% increase in households owed a statutory homelessness duty between 2018 and 2024 at a huge cost, with £1.29m spent on temporary accommodation in 2023/24.

But homelessness doesn’t exist in isolation. It’s a reflection of much wider deprivation, which has been brought to the fore by the spate of serious violent crimes the region has witnessed over the last two weeks.

Middlesbrough is now England’s second-most deprived local authority by average score, up from fifth in 2019. Of its 90 neighbourhoods, 45 are among the most deprived 10% nationally and 13 are among the most deprived 1%.

Stockton also contains nine wards in the country’s most deprived 10%, with a homeless rate of 2.76 per 1,000. But Hartlepool bucks the trend — despite 42% of its neighbourhoods ranking among the 10% most deprived in England, its homeless rate of 1.79 is below the national average.

A path back to independent living

Cornerstones has provided frontline support for those affected by homelessness for more than 20 years through its housing pathway, which begins with initial engagement through community hubs and offers temporary accommodation and other support services — including Bob the therapy dog.

Morson says this ongoing support is crucial to help people live independently again in the long-term.

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This edition is totally free to read. If you want to support free, award-winning, independent journalism in the Tees Valley, you can get most content delivered straight to your inbox for free by subscribing.

Since it’s two years of The Teesside Lead we’re celebrating with a 20% discount for new paid subscribers. Click here to get the discount!

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Cleveland Police and Crime Commissioner Matt Storey has criticised the Home Office’s plans to give Cleveland Police an extra £2m to “tackle serious crime”, saying the additional funds “won’t touch the sides”.

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood made the announcement in the House of Commons last night (1st September) “in light of the situation the force has faced”, referring to last week’s A66 crash which killed two police officers and five young men, and the subsequent arrests and disorder in areas like Grangetown and South Bank related to organised crime.

Labour PCC Matt Storey told The Teesside Lead he’d “never turn money down,” but added, “it won’t touch the sides.

“The force think they need £26m to get back the funding they’ll have lost over austerity.”

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If Cleveland Police’s budget from 2010 is adjusted for inflation it would be £246m this year, but the force has only £196m to spend.

Storey told The Teesside Lead last week there was a £2.4m funding shortfall in the force’s budget. This is roughly equivalent to Cleveland Police’s increased costs of employer’s National Insurance contributions.

Responding to last night’s announcement, Storey continued: “The issue is structural. The [funding] formula has to change ASAP to reflect poverty and crime rates. It can’t wait until after the police reform work is done.”

The government published a white paper on police reform in January, setting out a blueprint to radically overhaul policing in England and Wales, including plans to reduce the number of police forces.

Middlesbrough and Thornaby East MP Andy McDonald agreed with the need for urgency, saying: “We can’t wait for police restructure. That’s years off.”

He told The Teesside Lead last night the money was “welcome”, but “doesn’t fix the gaping hole in resources long term”.

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Ms Mahmood said the new funding would “build on existing operations, including the clear, hold, build approach, which is both tough on serious crime and on the causes of serious crime, and has been shown to work across the country.”

She added: “The government will continue to work closely with Cleveland Police to ensure that they have all the support they need as they face these challenging circumstances and grieve the loss of two of their own.”

Responding in the House of Commons to Ms Mahmood, Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland MP Luke Myer said: “While I’m grateful for the £2m extra funding that’s been announced… in the long term what we need is funding formula reform.”

Hartlepool MP Jonathan Brash told the House: “These tragic events did not materialise out of the blue. The lawlessness that we’re seeing in parts of our communities did not happen overnight. It is the consequence of systemic underfunding for our police.”

Afterwards, Mr Brash told The Teesside Lead that last night’s announcement “cannot mask the need for a fundamental change to the funding formula that has resulted in our police and fire services being systematically underfunded for a decade.”

MPs returned to the Commons on Tuesday after their summer recess, the first day Parliament sat since Andy Burnham had become prime minister.

He told MPs: “I know the whole House will wish to join me in expressing deepest condolences to the family, friends and colleagues of PC Matthew Blades and PC Tom Clough, who were killed in the line of duty on the A66.

“We will do our best to support the Middlesbrough community, which is hurting and grieving right now, and we hear the call from the members of this House representing it for a discussion about investment in policing and police numbers.”

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When an old editor of mine lost interest in Teesside and I lost my job, I carried on investigating and reporting on the patch because I’ve been privileged to work in such an amazing area filled with generous and friendly people.

The events of the last week are an explosion of the social problems which are widespread across parts of the region, but in no way reflect the way people here are. There’s so much to be angry about on Teesside this week; the deaths of PC Matthew Blades and PC Tom Clough, the lionisation and celebration of the young lads who killed them, the death of a seven-year-old, the total silence on any of these events from the region’s elected mayor.

But I think about all the times when I’ve reported from Grangetown, and how friendly and welcoming people are. How happy people are to chat in the area. This past week’s events are not a reflection on the area, and I’m proud to bang the drum for Teesside week after week.

While my colleague Sarah Sinclair is new to reporting on this patch, I’m also incredibly proud of the story she’s written for this week’s edition. It really captures what’s led to this week, and what needs to be done to fix it.

If you enjoy it, please share it or subscribe for free.

Hopefully next week’s edition is less heavy.

Take care,

Leigh

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After a week in which two police officers were killed in a crash on the A66, a house fire claimed the lives of a seven-year-old girl and her aunt, and hundreds of extra officers were drafted into Teesside following a series of violent incidents, the region’s Police and Crime Commissioner says the force has spent years trying to “keep a lid” on problems while operating with “nowhere near enough” resources.

PC Tom Clough, 38, and PC Matthew Blades, 37, died in a collision with a Volkswagen Passat which was travelling the wrong way down the A66 near South Bank, in the early hours of Saturday 22 August.

The five occupants of the Passat, Michael Robert Cahill, 23, Jakub Matusiak, 23, Makai Saddington, 18, Theo Rae, 17, and 17-year-old Cole Robert Worthy, also died. Police later confirmed that four out of the five had previous convictions, including assaulting police officers and aggravated vehicle taking.

Police have now made 24 arrests as part of a “wide-scale investigation” into the criminality which took place before the crash, including a 16-year-old boy and two men, 18 and 21, arrested on suspicion of participating in an organised crime group.

Two men have also been arrested on suspicion of murder after a house fire in Grangetown killed two people, named locally as Natalie McDonald and her seven-year-old niece, Valentina, on Wednesday.

Cleveland Police and Crime Commissioner Matt Storey told The Teesside Lead that the two incidents were not linked, but were both “emblematic of the pressure that the force is under”.

“Cleveland Police have over many years kept a lid on some of these issues, and things have kind of bubbled under the surface,” he said.

“Unfortunately, we have had two really horrendous incidents back to back where we’ve seen some of the really serious issues come to the surface, and we can see now the pressures that the force is managing on a daily basis.”

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Over 200 extra police officers from forces around the country have now been deployed to Teesside amid fears of escalating violence, as houses were rammed and videos on social media show several torched cars at a vigil near Peterlee for one of the crash victims on Thursday.

Storey said the support from other forces had been “tremendous”, but the events have exposed pressures Cleveland Police has been warning about for years.

“Cleveland Police do a remarkable job based on the degree of funding that they have,” he added. “And it’s just nowhere near enough.”

“Metropolitan levels of crime”

The force received one of the lowest funding increases in the UK for the year 2026-27 despite managing the highest crime rate per person in England and Wales.

According to the latest data, 23,419 crimes were recorded over the past 12 months, equivalent to 150 crimes per 1,000 people and a one percent increase on the previous year.

The force also reported a rate of 21.7 homicides per million people, representing the highest level among UK police force areas, as well as significantly higher rates of criminal damage and arson.

In December, Policing Minister Sarah Jones announced a £195.7 million funding settlement for the region, but according to the PCC, after accounting for the cost of last year’s pay award, Cleveland effectively only received an increase of 2.9% — the lowest in the country and a real-term reduction in funding.

Storey warned that due to Government grants rising at a significantly lower rate than inflation and pay awards, Storey warned that the force was facing a £2.4m funding shortfall - the equivalent of around 40 full-time police officers.

Storey wrote to the Government back in December and has repeatedly called on ministers to introduce a fairer approach to how resources are allocated in order to address “chronic underfunding” of the force.

“There’s a significant budget gap,” said Storey, who met with the policing minister on Friday to repeat his previous demands.

“We get treated like a rural force, but we’ve got metropolitan levels of crime,” he explained.

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“We get the lowest settlement of any police force in the country, below the national average, and the impact is amplified year on year.

“We need to see the funding formula change, so how it is distributed reflects poverty, deprivation and crime rates, and not population size.”

Funding mechanism “not fit for purpose”

Teesside’s Labour MPs, Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough and Thornaby East), Chris McDonald (Stockton North), Luke Myer (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland), Jonathan Brash (Hartlepool), and Anna Turley (Redcar), have also called for more resources for police and emergency services.

In a joint letter, they said they had met the policing and crime minister to discuss the pressures being felt locally.

Speaking to The Teesside Lead on Friday, Andy McDonald MP for Middlesbrough and Thornaby East, said the current funding approach is “not fit for purpose”.

“It’s a ridiculously skewed funding formula based upon population statistics that are out of date and do not reflect the criminal activity going on in any particular area,” he commented.

“This is not an equitable settlement, with forces with nothing like the crime profiles of Cleveland receiving resources way above what is needed for those communities to remain safe. I’m making the case to the policing minister and the prime minister that we need to address that.”

The legacy of austerity

Cleveland is still dealing with the legacy of austerity-era cuts.

In 2010, it was forced to slash the number of officers on the street by more than 200, in an effort to meet a 20% cut in government funding. Storey says he would first and foremost like to see a return to 2010 levels.

But the underfunding of police is not the only issue, with McDonald pointing to an “erosion of the entire public sector architecture around providing proper education and employment opportunities.”

Redcar and Cleveland Council leader Alec Brown said cuts to other more preventative services had also had a “knock-on effect”.

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A row between Middlesbrough councillors intensifies, as the leader of the opposition Speaks to The Teesside Lead and accuses a Labour councillor of hypocrisy.

Cllr Mick Saunders leads the opposition group on Middlesbrough Council, the Middlesbrough Independent Councillors Association (MICA), having first been elected as an independent in Park End and Beckfield in 2015. However, despite recently listing membership of Reform UK in his register of interests, he continues to sit on the council as an independent councillor.

There are no rules in either Middlesbrough Council or Reform UK’s constitutions which prohibit a member of the party from sitting as an independent, or as a member of another group.

Earlier this month, Labour councillor Tom Mohan accused Saunders, and his fellow Park End and Beckfield councillor Stephen Hill of not “being straight with the public” for being members of Reform but sitting as independents.

MICA has eight councillors, and is the largest grouping outside of Labour on Middlesbrough Council. As leader of the grouping, Cllr Saunders is entitled to an additional allowance of £2,700. Reform UK has two councillors, led by Nunthorpe councillor Joanne Rush.

Cllr Mohan has demanded Saunders stand down as leader of the group, and “forfeit” the allowance.

He added: “The people of Middlesbrough deserve to know who really runs Reform in Middlesbrough - is it their apparent leader Cllr Rush or Cllr Saunders, the so-called independent.”

Now, in comments to The Teesside Lead, Cllr Saunders has accused Cllr Mohan of “hypocrisy”, saying, “he would not have reacted the same if I became a member of the Labour Party”.

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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!

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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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