Teesside Airport would have made £9m loss without last minute grant from TVCA

Delving into the latest accounts and Ben Houchen's latest claims taking flight

‘Twas the night before Christmas, and obviously, it means accounts for Teesside Airport get published, and you get an edition of The Teesside Lead delivered into your inbox to chew through it all.

There’s a week left to get a 30% discount on annual subscriptions on The Teesside Lead. An annual subscription will now cost only £34.30 which works out at £2.85 a month. It’s the cheapest way to support, but it’s free to subscribe and share!

I hope you have a great Christmas, thanks for all of your support through 2025.

Leigh

---

Teesside Airport finances saved by last minute £10m grant

Teesside International Airport (Image: Leigh Jones).

Teesside Airport would have made a £9m net loss last year if it wasn’t for a last minute £10m grant from TVCA that was approved by concerned cabinet members three days before the end of the airport’s financial year.

Ben Houchen proudly claimed this week that Teesside Airport’s published accounts show a £1.1m net profit, the first since Tees Valley Combined Authority (TVCA) took ownership. The previous year’s accounts (for year-ending 31 March 2024) showed a net loss of £6.6m, so it really is a turnaround for Teesside International Airport Limited (TIAL).

Especially when you look into the newly-published accounts and see that revenue for the year-ending March 2025 grew by just under £2m compared to the previous year from £14.9m to £16.9m. Admin expenses were up by £1m this year, too.

But a new revenue stream added to the balance sheet proved to make the difference and give Lord Houchen the good news he wanted to share on social media before the end of 2025.

That new revenue stream is £10,108,000 in “Government grants”.

Without this £10.1m added to the airport’s balance sheet, it would have made a net loss of £9m - £2.4m more than the £6.6m loss incurred the previous year.

Just three days before end of the airport’s financial year, members of TVCA’s Cabinet - the heads of the constituent local authorities - approved a £12.5m grant to the airport as part of a wider £100m investment review for the region. The councillors talked about the grant for the airport - a small part of the agenda - for more than an hour.

After attending the meeting, I wrote about it here.

Councillors complained about a “flawed process” in being forced to make the decision after being given the information on providing the grant to the airport along with a raft of other measures that they were expected to approve as one, or not at all.

During the meeting, Middlesbrough mayor Chris Cooke said: “I’m not quite comfortable with how the process has been handled so far.

“I would have liked an earlier conversation about this,” he added.

In the run-up to the meeting there was speculation about the airport’s cash flow, with reports it only had enough money to stay open until June 2025. Lord Houchen said that wasn’t the case.

When asked by Redcar Council leader Alec Brown if the airport was viable without the grant, Lord Houchen said the airport would still be financially viable without the grant. Depending on your definition of “financially viable”, this is a lie.