Tees Valley Combined Authority chief executive Julie Gilhespie to leave role
Plus: Tees Valley housebuilding targets, devolution, protesting farmers, Teesworks connections and for paid subs the lowdown on John Barnes (not *that* John Barnes)
Oh, what an absolutely chock-full edition of The Teesside Lead this is. Number 16 if you’re counting.
As I was just putting the finishing touches to this edition the news started to break that TVCA chief executive Julie Gilhespie was due to leave her role. She has apparently chosen to retire, and subsequently TVCA will undergo an enormous change in structure.
In this edition, paid subscribers will get a look into how Julie Gilhespie’s replacement as director for companies owned by TVCA has links to Teesworks developer Chris Musgrave, which pre-date his public sector role.
Elsewhere, I take a look at housebuilding targets in the Tees Valley after the government’s new planning framework was published. Local councils have been set a target of 2,628 new homes a year in the area.
There’s also news on devolution ahead of this week’s white paper, council budgets getting set and savings needing to be found, and I spoke to a farmer who’s organising a huge protest in Darlington tomorrow.
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So, farewell, Julie Gilhespie. Tees Valley Combined Authority’s chief executive is set to retire, coincidentally at the same point she resigned from her directorships of TVCA-owned companies because of what Ben Houchen described as “perceived conflicts of interest” surrounding her.
After forging a career in the private sector, she got her first public sector role as finance director at TVCA in August 2017. She ascended to interim managing director only nine months later, before becoming chief executive in November 2018. As a fledgling institution, establishing TVCA’s culture would have been one of her key tasks, alongside headstrong mayor Ben Houchen.
She oversaw the establishment of the original Teesworks joint venture agreement, as well as the controversially re-negotiated 90-10 deal which would eventually lead to the Conservative government commissioning an investigation into alleged corruption.
Her role as chief executive of the TVCA Group is set to be abolished in the wake of that government review into governance of the Teesworks project, which was published nearly a year ago. According to internal documents seen by the Local Democracy Reporting Service, this is to re-establish “the separation between the roles of the chief executive of TVCA and STDC”.
Ms Gilhespie was highly criticised in the Tees Valley Review for not only failing to declare potential conflicts of interest, but for not even recognising they existed.
Earlier this year I revealed both her daughters had been employed by TVCA. Her elder daughter, Caitlin, has been employed since September 2023, but Ms Gilhespie’s declaration of interests form from October 2023 said she had no “close relatives or associates [who] have an interest in any actual or potential contract with any TVCA Group entity”.
As a public servant earning a £170,000 salary, she subsequently complained about this level of scrutiny in a press interview she was somehow permitted to give during pre-election purdah.
The new governance structure for TVCA and its subsidiaries, of which there are roughly 13 entities, is apparently due to be implemented for the next financial year, although details are presently scant.
Neither TVCA nor Ben Houchen have commented on Ms Gilhespie’s departure.
How many houses do Tees Valley authorities need to build?
Thursday saw the government publish its overhaul of planning guidance in order to reach the goal of building 1.5m new homes in England in the next five years.
Housing Secretary Angela Rayner has reinstated mandatory housing targets which were dropped by the previous government in 2022, and given local authorities 12 weeks to provide their “local plan” on how they intend to achieve the new targets.
The introduction of the new National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) includes the new method by which the government calculates the number of homes each local authority has to build.
To achieve the 1.5m house goal, the NPPF sets a new housebuilding target of 370,000 a year, which is a huge increase in current housebuilding levels. In the year to March there were 221,070 net new homes in England, down 6 percent on the previous year. There haven’t been more than 250,000 new homes in over two decades.
Labour says this is a productivity issue. In order to speed up the process, the reforms mean building projects will bypass the committee stage at local authority as long as they conform to that area’s local plan.
The Construction Skills Network says 224,900 new workers will be needed between now and 2027 to meet the increase in building demand, leading to 2.67m people being employed in the industry.
A draft of the NPPF had been published shortly after Labour’s election victory and the government had been in consultation with local authorities and housebuilders in the intervening time.
The newly-defined “grey belt” will see developed land protected by the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act released for housebuilding. However, despite originally suggesting 50 percent of new houses on this land would be affordable.
The Home Builders Federation and the Land, Planning and Development Federation had both lobbied the government to replace the 50 percent target with 10 percent of grey belt homes to be affordable. The government largely ceded to their demands and dropped the 50 percent pledge to a requirement for 15 percent of grey belt homes to be affordable.
In the Tees Valley, new annual targets for housebuilding have been set for local authorities via the new “standard method assessment”.
All five councils have seen their targets lowered from the original numbers published in July, but they all see a huge increase compared to the previous advisory targets.
Redcar and Cleveland’s previous advisory target of 45 new homes a year is increased by over 1,200% to 559, and Darlington’s target of 152 increases to 440.
Stockton-on-Tees sees the largest number of new homes on its target in the region, with the expectation it builds 746 new homes a year until 2030.
With impeccable timing ahead of the announcement of the government’s new NPPF, the Institute for Government thinktank published a new report this week on how Metro mayors can help Labour reach its housebuilding targets.
The paper, titled “Devolution and urban regeneration: How can metro mayors transform England’s towns and cities?”, suggests more mayoral development corporations such as the one responsible for Teesworks should be created to get Britain building.
“One of the most powerful interventions that mayors can make to drive urban regeneration,” the report states, “is to establish a mayoral development corporation.”
It incorrectly describes the deal which saw private partners get 90% of Teesworks as leading to “the injection of further private sector capital.”
As previously reported on The Teesside Lead, the change in equity of Teesworks Ltd did not place any legal obligation on the private partners to invest, and until that point there was no evidence they had spent a single penny.
Meanwhile, on Thursday, all of England’s metro mayors met with chancellor Rachel Reeves in Darlington to discuss the future of devolution, with more powers and money set to come to them from Whitehall.
Afterwards, Ben Houchen described it as “a really positive thing.”
“As a Conservative, I’ve got a good relationship with this Labour government. They want to work with me,” he said.
“I hope we can continue that relationship because as I’ve always said, I work with anybody who wants to work with me to deliver for local people.
“Hopefully this government is true to its word and continues to work with me so I can continue to deliver for all of you across Teesside Darlington and Hartlepool.”
The Lead’s national title has an exclusive about how mental health charities are stretched to breaking point and going beyond their remits to help those in distress because of failures in NHS provision.
Author Jessica Bradley spoke to charities across the UK, including in Stockton and North Yorkshire.
Council budget squeezes in Hartlepool and Boro
For many people it’s the time of year when work starts to wind down, and our minds start to drift to drawing circles on the Radio Times, and being appalled that a box of Quality Street now somehow costs £6.
But for local government, it’s the time of year when draft budgets start getting circulated before councils vote on them in the new year.
Hartlepool Borough Council has forecast a deficit of £13.144m for 2025/26, and officers have drafted cuts which could lead to nearly £3m of savings for the council.
Both the Christmas lights switch-on and bonfire night display could be axed as they go under review. It’s believed dropping all events would save £75,000, but saving the fireworks display would save £40,000.
Removing Christmas trees from Seaton and the Headland would save £10,000.
In the face of such a huge deficit, it feels somewhat futile, although councillors are hopeful pressure will be eased by the government’s improved offer to local councils.
In October’s Budget, chancellor Rachel Reeves announced an increase of £1.3bn in the amount of money given to local councils. The total budget in 2024-25 was £64.7bn, meaning a 2% increase.
Hartlepool Council’s budget for 2023-24 was £127m. If it was to receive a 2% increase in the new settlement from Whitehall it would only plug £2.5m of the expected £13m shortfall. At a meeting of the council’s finance and policy committee earlier this month, council boss Denise McGuckin said “staff morale isn’t great.”
Meanwhile, Middlesbrough is hoping to make £7m of cuts, but is increasing spending in areas such as street cleaning, pest control and tree maintenance. Among other measures, the council aims to save £150,000 by reducing energy usage, and will cut 20 jobs (12 of which are currently vacant and unadvertised).
With both councils set to raise council tax by 4.99%, it’s an excellent time to read a new post about the unfairness of the levy by Rob Parsons, who writes the daily Northern Agenda newsletter.
He asks why a £150,000 house in Hartlepool pays £1,858 a year, while an £8m house in Westminster only pays £1,655 in council tax.
In a very weird coincidence, I had written most of this small bit before Rob had published his piece with an almost identical intro. Oh, what a laugh we had about it.
Farmers to protest in Darlington
Farmers are planning a protest in Darlington tomorrow against the government’s proposals to change inheritance tax on agricultural land. It’s expected to be the largest such protest to take place outside London.
Organiser Clare Wise, who’s a fifth generation mixed farmer (farming cattle, sheep and crops) from near Darlington, spoke to The Teesside Lead about the protest and how her family is likely to lose their farm as a result of October’s Budget.
Clare says that because she’s the sole owner of her farm she doesn’t qualify for the additional relief accounted for in Rachel Reeves’ Budget.
“A lot of family businesses, quite often it’s not a married couple,” Clare said, “a massive proportion of farms are not married couples.
“The reality is a £1 million valuation of a farm won’t buy you a farm these days. It will buy you a house and a pony paddock, but to buy an actual, productive family farm these days you’re looking in excess of three to four million pounds in the North East of England.”
She points to claims made by the NFU, the Country Landowners Association and The Central Association for Agricultural Valuers estimate more than 75,000 farms would be affected by the changes in inheritance tax, as opposed to the government’s claims of only around 500.
The 75,000 figure is based over 30 years, but the expectation that 2,500 farms a year would be subject to the new rules is still five-times higher than the government’s own estimation.
Clare says the protest on Monday is about showing people in Darlington how many farmers live in the area, and provide food for the town.
She adds the protest isn’t just about inheritance tax, with capital grants schemes coming to a close with no replacement yet announced, as well as the phased removal of direct payments and their replacement - delinked payments - since 2021. The phased removal of direct payments is a result of Brexit, although the previous government claimed it would continue to invest in agriculture.
“Inheritance tax is the straw that broke the camel’s back,” says Clare, “this government is bringing in a whole raft of measures that really will kill off the family farm.”
Farmers are due to meet tomorrow at Darlington Farmers Auction Mart for their usual market day, before heading into town to demonstrate. They’re expected to be in town between 2pm and 3pm.
Links to Teesworks developer pre-date STDC chief’s appointment
In the last edition I covered the South Tees Development Corporation (STDC) meeting which featured Ben Houchen’s four-minute rant about people with “agendas” criticising Teesworks.
I also noted that STDC’s chief operating officer, John Barnes, had been appointed director of a number of companies in place of TVCA chief executive Julie Gilhespie, as a direct result of the Tees Valley Review’s strong criticisms of her.
The John Barnes most people know is the footballer who’ll implore you to hold and give, but do it at the right time. But what about this one? And how has he ended up overseeing the public sector’s stake in Teesworks?
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