Cleveland Fire company in High Court owing £1.2m
Plus: Teesside Tech has cause to celebrate
After a week in Corfu and now returning to matching weather in the North East, you’d better believe my knees are getting an airing on the North Sea coast.
It’s edition number 56 of The Teesside Lead, and we’re back with a good one.
I’ve been told lots of rumours about Cleveland Fire Authority’s commercial ventures over the last 12 months, but it’s been difficult to verify a lot of it and make them stand up and get published, but this week a High Court hearing made that impossible to ignore.
If you have any information about Cleveland Fire businesses (or any other stories!), please get in touch at teesside@thelead.uk or via Bluesky.
Thanks for reading.
Leigh
A company owned by the Cleveland Fire Authority was at the High Court this week facing a winding-up petition from HMRC over an unpaid tax bill of £690,000, and debts of £1.2m.
CFB Risk Management Services CIC (CFBRMS) is a commercial venture, owned by the Cleveland Fire Authority, and provides training, consultancy, fire engineering and “asset protection services”.
The company was served with a winding-up petition at the High Court from HMRC. Its most recently published accounts (for year ending March 2024) show an outstanding tax bill of £688,398. The total owed to creditors in the 12 months to March 2025 was £1,250,438 - more than a million pounds more than the year before.
Between 2023 and 2024 the company went from a position where it had net assets of £132,606 to one of net liabilities of £599,504.
Despite being publicly-owned, it’s not yet clear how much public money may have been lost.
According to the published accounts, a repayment plan was in place with HMRC for the outstanding tax bill, but it represented “significant doubt” on the company’s ability to continue as a going concern.
Despite the payment plan the company was at the High Court on Wednesday as a result of a winding-up petition - meaning the repayment plan was not kept to.
A clerk at the High Court told me the case has been adjourned to the 13th August.
The Fire Authority, which owns the CIC, is separate from Cleveland Fire Brigade - which it also oversees - and is made up of sixteen elected members from the four constituent local authority areas (Hartlepool, Middlesbrough, Redcar & Cleveland and Stockton-on-Tees).
The existence of the Fire Authority is to provide democratic oversight of the budgets of fire brigades, because they’re partially funded by council tax.
In a statement to The Teesside Lead, a spokesperson for Cleveland Fire Brigade was determined to establish distance between the emergency service and the commercial venture. They said: “Cleveland Fire Brigade is aware of the situation concerning Cleveland Fire Brigade Risk Management Services Community Interest Company (CIC) and the associated legal proceedings.
“The CIC was established in 2011 as a Community Interest Company and now operates independently of Cleveland Fire Brigade.”
A CIC is a type of non-profit company structure. According to CFBRMS’s website, 65% of its profits “are put back into our local community towards great innovative causes.”
The Fire Brigade spokesperson continued: “Following changes in leadership within Cleveland Fire Brigade, none of the current executive leadership team at Cleveland Fire Brigade have any association with the CIC We were made aware of the legal proceedings through media articles.
“Cleveland Fire Brigade remains unaffected by the position of the CIC and continues to deliver services to the communities of Teesside.”
The Fire Brigade emphasised none of its current executive team are associated with the CIC, however, its former Chief Fire Officer, Ian Hayton, has been a director of the CIC since it was established in March 2011, and continues on the board despite retiring last September.
Since the CIC’s last accounts were published, and before it was summoned to the High Court, it looks as though CFBRMS’s directors began to prepare for the inevitable.
In February a new company was formed, CFB Risk Management Group Limited. The new limited company (i.e. no longer a non-profit) has two directors - the retired Ian Hayton, and the CIC’s MD, Steve Bruce. It’s also owned entirely by the public Cleveland Fire Authority.
I tried to contact the chair of the Cleveland Fire Authority - the body which owns the CIC and oversees the fire brigade - but got no response. Likewise, the CIC itself.
Mr Hayton could not be reached.
I’ve heard lots of rumours about CFB’s commercial ventures over the last 12 months, but have found it difficult to verify a lot of what I’ve heard. If you have any information you’d like to share, don’t hesitate to get in touch. Credit to Hartlepool Today for their perseverance on this story.
I have a gratuitous plug to make. Myself and the authors Alex Niven and Peter Mitchell are putting on another night of culture and pints at the Alphabetti Theatre in Newcastle.
July 4th’s Lort Burn Special will see me in conversation with railway engineer Gareth Dennis. He wrote the excellent book, How The Railways Will Fix the Future (2024) and last year lost his job when the now-railways minister Lord Hendy intervened after he raised safety concerns about overcrowding at Euston station.
There’ll also be readings from local authors Yara Rodrigues Fowler, Lyndsey Ayre and Jake Trelease, as well as music from Lucy Valentine.
Get your tickets here.
Teesside stories you may have missed…
🐈 A statue for a popular Saltburn cat was revealed while I was on holiday
🌊 The Norwegian government is investing billions in its own carbon capture scheme under the North Sea
📕 A nine-year old who lost her father has written a book to help other children deal with grief
💪🏼 A wrestler from Hartlepool came third in the world in a bodybuilding competition (I am an avowed fan of pro-wrestling and Shreddy is one of the most entertaining local wrestlers I’ve seen, and I’m so happy for him!)
I commissioned this piece from North East tech-bod and all round good egg Jamie Hardesty to run last week while I was away, but there were some gremlins in the machine and it didn’t make it. Anyway, here it is in its glory!
Teesside Tech has cause to celebrate
By Jamie Hardesty
I’ve long felt we ‘over-support’ tech start-ups in North East England.
As a small region with a fairly embryonic tech ecosystem, I often see folks reward and put early-stage companies on a pedestal for simply being a startup rather than for building a startup that is solving real customer problems. While this can be well-intentioned, it’s misinformed and ultimately damaging.
Don’t get me wrong, I spend much of my time encouraging people to get into the tech sector or to give tech-related entrepreneurship a go. An accessible culture and positive learning environment is welcome. The North East absolutely needs fresh ideas and it needs first time founders, from diverse walks of life, taking risks. Trust me, I’ll always be at the front of the queue when it comes to knocking down barriers and championing tangible successes.
Yet there are too many weak or zombie ventures hyped up in the ecosystem, usually by people who either lack advisory credibility or have an angle of their own to prosper from.
This isn’t OK. We can and should do better.
Rather than keeping underperformers alive, I’ve often argued we address unfulfilled potential by shifting focus from activity to outcomes, robustly supporting founder learning, and building a culture where smart failure is part of the process. I’d much prefer us to encourage and nurture budding founders this way, rather than artificially prop up unproven business ideas for years to no avail.
This isn’t revelatory insight; rather this mantra of ‘support the founder, not the idea’ is actually the no-brainer bedrock of many a credible, established hub.
I’m sure I’ll be labelled cynical, misanthropic or even somewhat of a naysayer but I’ve honestly lost count of how many startups I see being hailed as the next big thing because they’ve been on an incubator backed by a bank or they’ve been listed for an award or they’ve got a couple of column inches in Gazettelive or Businesslive. It’s so often the case that these companies have little or no demonstrable traction of note. At all.
I’m not the only one to have observed this in the North East. Many have. As a result, credible actors in the ecosystem can feel jaded and indeed reluctant to lean into activity and get involved in supporting their local tech scene. I don’t want to punch down but I know we can raise the bar.
Though, while there are clearly parts of our collective culture I take umbrage with, there are many things we get right too. Not everything is hot air and bluster. Credible networks, scaling companies and recurring examples of circularly virtuous behaviours absolutely do exist. We should recognise and damn-well champion the good stuff.
What’s actually interesting right now in the North East is that the aforementioned ‘good’ extends far beyond the region’s ‘leading’ city of Newcastle; there’s impressive development happening in both Sunderland and Middlesbrough which shouldn’t be overlooked. As this is The Teesside Lead, I’ll focus on the latter today.
I was genuinely buoyed last week when I attended the Tees Tech Awards in Redcar. Teesside’s tech scene is more coordinated, mature and flourishing than I’ve ever seen. Of course, momentum hasn’t happened overnight.
What we’re now seeing is a stock of established companies, highly active and focused ecosystem facilitators and an emerging stock of startups and talent which together are fuelling a fast-growth environment.
As I’ve hinted, I usually take awards shows with a pinch of salt. Yet what I liked about this event was the shared purpose, mission and pride on display. Practically all sponsors and winners in their speeches talked about the area’s upward trajectory and collective momentum.
The night was positive and giddy but it wasn’t silly; it was authentic and celebratory of real achievement. I was hugely impressed by leading firms like Applied Integration and Labman Automation but also by the work of emerging players like Salvify, BearTech and Platvix.
And it’s not difficult to see the fabric of the ecosystem, knitting activity together. Teesside University and its development programmes are well embraced. Perhaps the heartbeat of momentum and belief oozes from innovation consultancy Alt Labs, led by passionate regional advocates Imran Anwar and Daniel Watson.
Teesside tech has had some huge wins in the last couple of years. It’s carving niches in digital gaming, software development and AI application. Companies like Salesfire and Radical Forge are raising millions in investment. SeerBI’s pioneering AI solution for customs and trade compliance, Flytta, was acquired by Sedna recently. A new Investment Zone for Teesside is in the works, believed to create 2,000 jobs in the field of creative and digital.
This is a band with cadence, you should tune in.
Look, I won’t pretend my award show-cynicism has subsided but I’m genuinely left marvelling at what’s being built in Teesside. The fact it has an inclusive and purpose-led awards bash to tie momentum together shouldn’t be snivelled at. In fact, I’d like to see the after-party.
Jamie Hardesty is one of the North East’s most active and respected tech ecosystem leaders. Combining research, journalism, hands-on consultancy and national advocacy, Jamie is at the coalface of strengthening the region’s tech scene.