It’s the largest brownfield site in Europe. Well, so goes the claim. That one’s already been debunked. A site that is claimed to consist of 4500 acres turns out to only run to 2,402 acres. But who actually owns this land? And how much progress are Teesworks and the South Tees Development Corporation(STDC) really making on the land they do own? It’s time for a catch up.
A story in two parts
We’ll tell this story across two separate articles. In Part One, we’ll explore the birth of the Teesside regeneration project, including how the various land deals were made, and who ended up with ownership of which land.
About those 2,402 acres of land
The ownership of the 2,402 acres is split between two entities. About half of it is owned by the public STDC, and the remainder is owned by the private Teesworks. The original masterplan for regeneration on Teesside had been for the STDC to purchase the entire former Redcar steelworks estate. The works had been closed in 2010, partly reopened in 2013, then finally closed in 2015. The STDC would remediate parcels of the land, then lease these parcels to new green companies. The fact that almost half of this land ended up in private hands from the get-go has been the cause of an awful lot of bother ever since. Read on.
It started so well
The first land became available in 2019. This was land that had belonged to Corus, the successor company to British Steel, who had built the modern Redcar steelworks in the mid 1970s. This land had been derelict since Corus ceased steel making on Teesside in February 2010. Tata Steel had acquired Corus’ assets in November of that year. The STDC bought 1,420 acres of land belonging to Tata for £11.5mn in 2019, exactly as per its business plan.
But what’s this?
The transactions involving land owned by Thai steel company Sahaviriya Steel Industries plc (SSI) were much more complicated. SSI had catastrophically failed to revive some of Tata/Corus’ former plants that it bought in 2013. The venture only lasted two years before SSI ran out of money and closed its Teesside operations permanently in 2015. However, subsequent to the closure SSI, unlike Tata/Corus, needed to keep its land, and hold out for a decent price. SSI had a consortium of three Thailand-based creditors, known as the ‘Thai Banks’, breathing down its neck. These creditors had rashly lent SSI hundreds of millions of pounds for its doomed UK venture. For the record, the Thai Banks are: Krung Thai Bank Public Company Limited, The Siam Commercial Bank Public Company Limited and TISCO Bank Public Company Limited.
Land snatch
But, having obtained the Tata/Corus land, the STDC badly needed the SSI land to get the regeneration rolling. So, in order to do this, the STDC instigated Compulsory Purchase Order (CPO) proceedings on 4 April 2019.
This IS legal, isn’t it?
Astonishingly, the day before the CPO hearing, on 19 February 2020, Teesworks Limited stepped in and bought 870 acres of land from SSI. The Thai Banks had objected to any deal that would involve the crucial Redcar Bulk Terminal (RBT), which they owned. This was the facility through which iron ore and coal for Redcar steelworks were imported. But the 19 February deal didn’t include the RBT, so the Thai banks were happy to sign over the 870 acres for £16mn. The Tees Valley Review report would later highlight the 19 February 2020 deal as a ‘significant decision’. Here’s an excerpt from that report:
Red flag ahoy!
This transaction was in direct conflict with the business model, by which a public entity, the STDC, would take ownership of all of the former steelworks land. Red flags should have been raised with the STDC board, the TVCA Cabinet, and internal and external auditors. But nobody batted an eyelid, and the land deal went through almost unnoticed.
Redcar Bulk Terminal
Chris Musgrave and Martin Corney, later to become the Teesworks Joint Venture (JV) partners, had intended to purchase RBT in a separate deal to the 19 February one. A year earlier, in order to do this, they had taken a three-year option on 70 acres of land there. This would be used as leverage in future negotiations. The 70 acres would apparently be used as a ‘ransom strip’ making it difficult to operate the RBT without it. But the Thai Banks held out. They had signed a lucrative deal with Anglo American to export polyhalite (a natural fertilizer) from RBT, and they just had to wait for the three-year land option to expire.
Troubled finances
However, the Anglo American deal is now in abeyance due to financing difficulties at Woodsmith Mine, the source of the polyhalite. You can read more about these difficulties here. The Thai Banks still own RBT to this day in the hope of recouping some of their Teesside losses when market conditions improve. It extends to 320 acres. However, the RBT quay itself, a narrow strip of River Tees frontage, is owned and operated by PD Ports. You can see the RBT quay below in this March 2026 photo, with its two huge gantry cranes. The cranes are still employed to import building aggregates but are nowhere near as busy as they used to be.
I wasn’t sure about THAT deal. But THIS one?
The CPO hearing went ahead on 20 February and, on 29 April 2020, the STDC was granted powers to purchase a further 112 acres of former SSI land. This purchase was completed in the latter half of 2020. Tees Valley Monitor reported that the transaction was recorded at the Land Registry on 25 July 2021. A further application was then received by the Land Registry on 8 March 2021 for the 112 acres of land. Chris Musgrave, a wealthy local property developer, later stated that he made a deal to buy the 112 acres of land from the STDC on 20 February 2020, the same day as the STDC was granted compulsory purchase powers over it. This purchase was made by DCS Industrial (South) Ltd (DCSIS), a company jointly owned by Chris Musgrave and Martin Corney, another wealthy local land developer.
Checks and balances
The checks and balances that should have brought this to a grinding halt didn’t exist in a culture where Ben Houchen, as chair of both the TVCA and STDC, called the shots without question.
A phoenix from the ashes
DCSIS was dissolved via a voluntary strike-off on 11 March 2025. During the company’s five years of existence, it recorded £100 in current assets in each annual set of accounts. There is no record of a property purchase in any of the accounts. The land has subsequently been transferred to the ownership of Teesworks Limited at an unknown date. So Chris Musgrave and Martin Corney now owned 982 acres of former Redcar steelworks land between them.
So what about the rest of the land?
Some time between January 2019 and September 2020, the STDC’s land was transferred to South Tees Developments Ltd (STDL). We know this because STDL is listed as the property owner in a diagram of the STDC’s Governance Structure, produced for its board meeting that month. STDL is a private company, even though it is 100% owned by the STDC. It’s not known what the purpose of this transfer was. For the purpose of clarity, however, I am going to refer to the STDC as the owner of this land for the remainder of this article. The Governance diagram is shown below:
Disinformation
The Governance diagram is highly misleading. It shows the TVCA controlling, via the STDC, three entities. In fact, it only controlled one of them and still does. DCSIS Ltd is/was 100% privately owned. South Tees Enterprise Ltd had become Teesworks Limited by this time but was still referred to by its previous name for some reason. In February 2020, Chris Musgrave and Martin Corney agreed to split ownership of the company 50/50 between the public sector STDC, and a group of four Joint Venture partners, of whom Musgrave and Corney held the majority shareholding. In August 2021, the company began a journey which led to the unsolved mystery by which the Joint Venture partners came to control 90% of Teesworks three months later, leaving 10% to the public sector STDC. The Tees Valley Review report was baffled by this deal, as this excerpt shows:
Run that past me one more time
Ben Houchen would later claim that the JV partners told him that they owned “a significant legal interest in RBT – about 70 acres of land on the right-hand side – and SSI were now badgering them to give them that legal interest because they couldn’t really properly redevelop the 280 acres they’ve got without controlling the whole thing”
Houchen went on “Remarkably, SSI told Musgrave and Corney that if they gave up the 70 acres that united the RBT site, they could have the rest of the steelworks site in exchange…So Chris Musgrave and Martin Corney hot-footed it to the STDC and proposed a development partnership.”
Unbelievable Jeff
But, as we have already discovered, the SSI had no incentive to “badger” the JV partners over RBT. They could have just sat back and waited while the JV partners’ three-year land option expired. Scott Hunter has covered Ben Houchen’s unbelievable account of this sequence of events more thoroughly in this Tees Valley Monitor article. Houchen has never been held to account for this nonsense.
Even more red flags
Surely the Joint Venture should have raised more red flags than even the previous stunts? But lack of oversight at the STDC meant that any such red flags were ignored. The organogram below shows the key role of Ben Houchen in the STDC and TVCA at the time:
STDC board members
Further details of the STDC board members, and their roles, can be seen in ‘Further Reading’ at the end of this article.
Back to the business model
The South Bank zone was given first priority, and work continued at a frenetic pace. South Bank Quay was completed in April 2024. This 450m quay is described as the first phase of an eventual 1,000m project. The remaining 550m of quay will almost certainly never be built. The STDC / Teesworks project has relied almost entirely on government grants and subsidies that aren’t available anymore. Work started on the SeAH factory in the summer of 2022. But things haven’t gone so well there, and it still isn’t finished as of March 2026. However, the STDC has followed its business model of selling land parcels after they have been remediated. But with one crucial twist.
Sale of the Century
The STDC has sold three separate land parcels to Teesworks. The details can be seen below
This information was provided courtesy of Private Eye magazine’s ‘Stripped Tees’ special, linked here, with additional reporting from the 6 March 2026 edition of the magazine, Issue No. 1670. The amounts in the right-hand column are not fictional. These are genuine land deals. In all three cases, Teesworks has signed lucrative leases with the new occupants, and the deals have been structured so that public entities such as the TVCA and the STDC will be liable for losses in the event of the failure of any of these businesses.
Well, that’s outrageous, but…
Teesworks immediately leased the SeAH Factory site to the TVCA for 40 years at £3.65mn a year, then sold this income stream to Australian firm Macquarie for £93mn. Meanwhile, of the £51mn in government funding used to remediate the factory site, public coffers will be reimbursed to the tune of £0.00. Regarding South Bank Quay, Teesworks will pay the STDC a tonnage fee of £4mn per year, but only if it makes sufficient profits. However, the recent meltdown at the SeAH factory may mean that such profits are less likely to occur.
Tipping the balance
The overall transfer of 250 acres of land at South Bank has shifted the balance of land ownership. Privately owned Teesworks now owns a majority share of the regeneration land. Its share has increased from 982 to 1,232 acres. The share owned by the publicly owned STDC has decreased from 1,420 acres down to 1,170 acres. Friendly reminder that the 2020 business plan was for ALL of the land to remain under public ownership. The change in ownership is illustrated below:
Developable land
Now that we’ve set the land ownership record as straight as we can, let’s focus on the land that Teesworks and the STDC considers “developable”. Much of the total 2,402 acreage consists of landfill sites and slagheaps, several of which contain hazardous waste. They’re considered to be ”undevelopable”: too expensive to remediate, and they probably never will be. In a presentation to the TVCA Overview and Scrutiny Committee on 4 September 2024, the committee was presented with an analysis of business rates, which helpfully provided information on the amount of land that Teesworks/STDC considers ‘developable’. It’s 1,273 acres.
Wasteland
So, by deduction, the amount of ‘undevelopable’ land is 1,129 acres. Neither Ben Houchen, the TVCA, the STDC nor Teesworks, has ever disclosed that almost half of the land in their flagship regeneration project is incapable of being put to any use. The South Gare Zone is a case in point. This drone shot by Grecko Indie Media looks north east, to where a lighthouse can be seen at the end of South Gare. The River Tees is to the left, with the North Sea to the right. Blast furnace slag from Downey & Co ironworks was dumped here from 1873 to 1967. As can be seen, some of it was later quarried out.
A beautiful nature reserve
The South Gare is part sand dunes, part Open Mosaic Habitat (OMH) a post-industrial nature reserve. The zone forms part of the South Gare and Coatham Sands Site of Special Scientific Interest.
Slaggy Island
Four miles to the south west, over in South Bank, that zone contains three separate hazardous waste dumps. Not for nothing was South Bank known locally as “Slaggy Island”. This is a photo taken from the top one of the slag heaps, High Tip, during a public tour of Teesworks. The neighbouring SeAH Factory can be seen in the background.
Also, given recent news on the probable demise of the Hartlepool and Middlesbrough Development Corporations, as reported by Peter Morris for North East Bylines, we’ll discuss how a similar fate could await the STDC and its private sector counterpart Teesworks Limited.
Part Two to follow
In Part Two, we’ll discover the current use of various Teesworks and STDC land parcels, and the future plans for them.
Thanks to James Waterson for providing additional research for this article.
Further Reading
Teesworks: the largest brownfield site in Europe? – Part One
Teesworks: the largest brownfield site in Europe? – Part Two
Teesworks: the largest brownfield site in Europe? – Part Three*
*Please note: Part Three contains some outdated information about land ownership at Teesworks, which has been updated in this article.
STDC Board members in 2021
