Is the Teesworks incinerator project going up in smoke?
Plus: Ben Houchen's airport 'panacea' lands in Newcastle
Is it a dream, or is it yet another bank holiday weekend? Whatever you’re doing, I hope it’s a relaxed one!
For now, kick your Sunday off with edition number 52 of The Teesside Lead.
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Could the Teesworks incinerator project be going up in smoke?
Residents of Grangetown would be wise to check the direction the wind is blowing if it gets built, but the political wind may already be changing.
At a special full council meeting on the 13th May, Redcar Council met to discuss a single item agenda, a motion to withdraw Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council’s support for the Tees Valley Energy Recovery Facility at Teesworks - an incinerator due to be built to burn the waste from seven local authorities from across the North East.
Back in January, Tees Valley mayor Ben Houchen said if one or more councils in the joint venture were to pull out, it would “collapse the whole project”.
Progressing the council’s involvement with the scheme was set to be a delegated decision - one made by council officers on behalf of the politicians. However, an amendment at the meeting changed this, instead putting the decision back into the hands of the council’s cabinet. I couldn’t believe my eyes - politicians volunteering to take responsibility over a highly contentious issue in their constituency.
Following this rare advert for local democracy, Ben Houchen was asked at a TVCA scrutiny committee meeting the following day what his thoughts on the project were. He said if it were up to him the project wouldn’t be moving forward.
He criticised the fact that only Teesworks had been considered for the project, which will burn unrecyclable waste from the five Tees Valley authorities, as well as that from County Durham and Newcastle.
It may have been something he could have had a say over had his South Tees Development Corporation retained its 50% shares in Teesworks Ltd, but since handing over the development vehicle to private interests a land deal has been agreed between Teesworks and Hartlepool Council, who are leading the project on behalf of the other six.
Teesworks Ltd refused to respond to Ben Houchen’s comments when I approached them.
A spokesperson for the TVERF partners refused to comment specifically on Houchen’s comments, but shared previously-published information about the location being chosen because of its allocation for waste management in the Local Development Plan, and for having good connections to the National Grid.
They also said alternatives to incineration, which Lord Houchen said are recently emerging, are not yet viable at scale.
The Labour councillors who run Redcar, as well as local Labour MP Anna Turley, have been vocal in their opposition to the TVERF project. Their Conservative counterparts hold the same position.
Redcar withdrawing from the project could well be the first domino to fall in the collapse of the entire scheme.
For further reading/listening, one of the first things I did as a reporter for the BBC was this little three minute audio package about the plans back in September last year, where everyone I spoke to in Grangetown was oblivious. Listen here on BBC Sounds.
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Houchen’s ‘airport panacea’ lands in Newcastle
I was working in BBC Newcastle’s newsroom on Wednesday when a press release arrived asking reporters to arrive at Newcastle Airport the following morning for an announcement at 7am.
They were very coy about the details, but the decision was that it was probably something boring like a new destination.
In the context of Teesside’s airport, though, the announcement that easyJet were planning to base three aircraft in Newcastle from next Spring was quite a blow to Lord Houchen, especially given comments he made on his first BBC Radio Tees phone-in just a week previously.
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