As a journalist there’s a strange conflict between wanting things to be quiet and wanting things to happen. When I got the breaking news alert on my phone last weekend my heart sank. Teesside was on the national news agenda for all the wrong reasons.
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
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 17 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.”
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, 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.
“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 because that is very unhelpful to us.”
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.
Andy McDonald 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 told The Teesside Lead.
“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.”
Middlesbrough Council leader Alec Brown said cuts to other more preventative services had also had a “knock-on effect”.
