Is Tees Valley regeneration possible without development corporations?

Plus: A deep dive into 350-page TVCA budget documents

One of my favourite things about today is the conflation between Mother’s Day and Mothering Sunday means a lot of Americans will wake up, see posts online from Brits celebrating their mothers and enter an absolute blind panic about having not sent a card or bought a gift.

Sometimes you have to take pleasure in the little things, don’t you?

Today’s edition of The Teesside Lead involved me combing through more than 350 pages of TVCA documents which were released on Friday.

If you want to support my work (and sanity) please sign up to get The Teesside Lead delivered to your inbox for free twice a week. It’s also free to share, and an incredibly powerful way of giving independent journalism a boost.

If you’re able to, a paid subscription is £49 a year.

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

Leigh

---

You may remember the case of the Darlington nurses who took their NHS trust to an employment tribunal over the fact a trans colleague of theirs was allowed to use a female dressing room. I wrote about the Islamophobic, anti-Semitic, fundamentalist Christians who backed their cause. Katherine Denkinson has written a deep dive into the group on The Lead’s national title.

Christian Concern: Inside the rise of a powerful evangelical lobby

---

An artist’s impression of the proposed Crown Square development in Gresham, which is now unlikely to materialise (Image: TVCA).

Tees Valley mayor Ben Houchen is considering scrapping two regeneration bodies he set up only three years ago. Hartlepool and Middlesbrough Development Corporations are facing the axe, with the former in financial difficulties and the latter losing investors for its flagship project.

According to board papers for this Friday’s Tees Valley Combined Authority (TVCA) Cabinet meeting, Lord Houchen “intends to review the requirement” of the regeneration bodies, and that funding from Middlesbrough Development Corporation (MDC) would be transferred to Hartlepool’s if one is scrapped and the other kept.

Hartlepool Development Corporation (HDC) needs a £1m boost to its funds in order to present a balanced budget for the next financial year. The development corporations were given £10m each by TVCA when they were set up.

HDC is facilitating the £13.8m redevelopment of Middleton Grange shopping centre and the former Binns department store building, with Hartlepool Borough Council. This is funded by the previous government’s Town Deal funding

MDC, meanwhile, suffered calamity when its flagship Crown Square redevelopment project in Gresham was put on hold due to concerns over its viability.

Last year Lord Houchen stood down as chair of both development corporations after TVCA was issued a Best Value Notice by the government over concerns relating to the authority’s ability to deliver value to taxpayers. That was followed by new government guidelines which said devolved mayors, like Houchen, should not chair development corporations.

The Cabinet meeting papers lay out the reasoning behind Lord Houchen’s review of the development corporations is that new legislation - the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill, which has nearly finished its journey through Parliament - will provide elected mayors with more powers over planning.

In a joint interview which was published around the same time as the meeting papers, Lord Houchen and Middlesbrough mayor Chris Cooke put on a united front, with the pair saying there was a need to assess whether a development corporation was the “right vehicle” for taking forward the town’s regeneration.

Chris Cooke, and the rest of Middlesbrough’s Labour councillors, were dead against the establishment of the MDC, calling it a “smash and grab” of the town’s assets. After the council voted against its establishment, then-secretary of state Michael Gove set up MDC a few days later anyway, a move described by Andy McDonald MP as “a serious denial of democracy”.