This is Part Two of the story of the largest brownfield site in Europe. In Part One, we explored the birth of the Teesside regeneration project, including how the various land deals were made, and who ended up with ownership of which land. You can read this here.
Dutch Auction
In this part, we will delve deeper into Teesworks’ untrue claim of a 4,500 acre estate. We’ll compare this claim to the 1,273 acres that are actually available, and we’ll examine how much of the land has actually been put to use. Then, finally, there’ll be a discussion of whether the STDC and Teesworks are fit for purpose going forward.
Tees Valley Review Report
In the Tees Valley Review (TVR) Report dated 23 January 2024, the reviewers stated that 450 acres had been remediated, or in the process of remediation. That statement, based on information provided by the TVCA, was vague, with no breakdown of which land has been remediated, but at least it was something to go on.
TVCA Cabinet
On 20 December 2024, a report to the TVCA Cabinet claimed that 612 acres had been remediated. However, the information presented on that day was six months out of date, as the report had been prepared in June 2024. The TVCA didn’t provide an analysis of which land had been remediated, and the information can’t be relied upon. An excerpt of the report is shown below:
Auld Lang Syne
Tees Valley Mayor Ben Houchen decided to see the 2025 New Year in on X (Twitter). His 31 December 2024 Tweet declared that 455 acres of land had been remediated at Teesworks. So, only 11 days after a cabinet report had claimed that 612 acres had been remediated, the total appeared to have decreased by 157 acres. The project appeared to be stuck in a time-space vortex. Here’s a clip of the mayor’s tweet:
Houchen also tweeted out the following regarding the Net Zero Teesside (NZT) site at the former Redcar steelworks:
It’s getting worse
If we accept that second Tweet at face value, it means that the total amount of remediated land, other than at NZT, was 349 acres. It would have been helpful if, at that stage, Houchen had let us know where this land was.
Progress up to March 2026
So, public announcements about Teesworks regeneration can be dismissed. In place of this, some detective work to try to get to the truth. We can start with a map produced by then TVCA Group Director of Finance and Resources, Gary Macdonald. It was created in January 2020 as preparation for the forthcoming CPO hearing. I’ve annotated Macdonald’s map to show the three land owners at the outset of this process, and the transfers that took place immediately following the main land deals:
If it’s brown, ignore it
It’s important to note that, despite appearing in countless TVCA and STDC press releases, the brown coloured area has never been included in the Teesworks / STDC project. It consists of over 2,000 acres which was in private ownership before Teesworks existed, and will continue to do so after Teesworks has gone.
Teesworks zonal map
The map below shows the same area of land as the map above, updated to March 2026, showing current land ownership in the Teesworks zones:
The Teesworks/STDC ‘zones’
Teesworks owns the former Redcar steelworks site outright, split into the Foundry and Net Zero Teesside (NZT) zones. The Foundry zone was originally meant to house the H2Teesside project, but that was cancelled in 2025. However, while ostensibly planning H2 Teesside, Teesworks was simultaneously negotiating with Google to build a data centre on the same piece of land. Ben Houchen claims that 3 Gigawatts of data centres are destined for the Foundry zone, including the Google one. You can read here how impractical those daydreams are. And here’s the Guardian reporting that many data centre proposals are phantom investments. But, yes, Redcar Blast Furnace is still right there in the middle of the Foundry zone. It hasn’t budged since the demolition process started in November 2022, but it will have to go before site preparation can begin for all of those data centres. Unless they’re imaginary.
Net Zero Teesside (NZT)
But credit where it’s due, Balfour Beatty is cracking on with NZT, although the idea of importing natural gas through the Strait of Hormuz to feed NZT doesn’t seem a very bright one right now.
Short straw, as usual
The publicly owned STDC owns the Long Acres and South Gare zones outright. As described above, the entire South Gare zone is undevelopable. The steelworks near the South Gare closed more than a century ago, and the site was levelled well before Teesworks started its scrap metal business. Here’s the tip of South Gare on a dreich March 2026 day, with the River Tees to the left of the photo:
The Long Acres zone doesn’t look much better. It’s the remains of a steelworks that closed in 1967, so it isn’t a target-rich environment for scrap metal collectors. It’s hardly been touched for nearly 60 years.
Yes, THAT land deal
The map also shows the 250 acres of land at South Bank that were originally owned by the STDC, but which have subsequently been purchased by Teesworks Limited for the grand sum of £150.35. You can read more about that deal in Part One of this article.
It’s smaller than you think
Similarly to the CPO map above, three of the zones shown on Teesworks’ map are nothing to do with the Teesworks project, and were only included in publicity maps as part of myth creation related to the ‘4,500 acres’ propaganda claim. The zones in question are Teesport, Bran Sands and Redcar Bulk Terminal (RBT). As discussed in Part One, PD Ports owns the quay frontage at RBT, the remaining 320 acres is owned by the Thai Banks, creditors of SSI.
Honey, I shrunk the Lackenby zone
Four fifths of the so-called Lackenby zone has nothing to do with Teesworks / STDC either. It’s owned by British Steel, the trading name of the Jingye Group. A small portion in the western part of Lackenby, about 20% of the land area, is jointly owned by Teesworks / STDC. This is the true extent of the Lackenby zone.
Co-owned zones
Three other zones, South Bank, Dorman Point, and Steel House contain a mixture of land owned by Teesworks and the STDC. A broad outline of the land owned by these two entities can be determined by comparing the CPO and zonal maps above.
Freedom of information
As official sources of information are inconsistent, we thought that it would be useful to measure the land remediation achievements ourselves. But the information wasn’t readily available, so we submitted a Freedom of Information request. Even then, the STDC refused to tell us the land acreage that had been remediated in each zone. The STDC claimed that this was owing to concerns affecting the confidentiality of commercially sensitive information. That old favourite.
Do the maths
However, the STDC did tell us, via two FOI responses, here and here, the percentage of land that had been remediated in each of the zones. Fortunately, the total acreage of each zone is freely available on the TVCA website, so we were able to calculate the total of remediated acreage in each zone anyway, as seen below. The overall total, 565 acres, is less than the dubious June 2024 total of 612 acres. The amount of land in each zone, and the percentage remediated as of March 2026, is shown in the table below:
Investors take flight
The slowdown in land remediation since public funding dried up may be having an impact on investors. Willis Aviation has switched from Dorman Point to Wilton International, which isn’t part of the Teesworks project. NatPower has also moved its project, Teesside Gigapark, to Wilton. This had been scheduled for Long Acres, but Teesworks had to notify the company of a long lead time for land remediation there.
Long Acres isn’t the place for me
Similarly, EOS has switched its BESS project from Long Acres to Lackenby. However, unlike Long Acres, the Lackenby land is owned by Teesworks, so the JV partners won’t even have to bother paying the usual nominal sum to acquire the factory site. The STDC has repeatedly denied that this transfer has taken place, despite it being a matter of public record.
Lackenby waiting list
But the lack of land remediation at Lackenby is stacking up problems too. No less than four schemes have been touted for this zone, but there’s been little activity at the site. Teesworks doesn’t like paying for land remediation itself. The projects are: An electricity substation for the private wire network, Tees Green Hydrogen, an HGV transport hub, and the above mentioned EOS BESS project.
It’s hard to keep up
However, agenda papers for the upcoming STDC Board meeting on 30 March 2026 confirm that the private wire network has given up on the idea of building its electricity substation at Lackenby. This will now be built in the Dorman Point zone instead.
Dude, where’s my land?
NZT and the data centres, assuming that they are built, will occupy the entire footprint of the former Redcar steelworks site. But this leaves little land available anywhere else in Teesworks. Only five zones have land available. The map below shows the remaining land, as of March 2026. It assumes that the 22-acre Tees Valley Energy Recovery Facility (TVERF) Grangetown Incinerator deal at Dorman Point will be signed off later in March 2026.
This seat’s already taken
But, even then, almost all of the land in these five zones has already been allocated, assuming that the proposed deals go ahead. Half of the South Bank zone is already occupied by the SeAH Factory and associated offshore base (OSB) facilities. Severfield’s OSB is still under construction. New business units are planned too.
More phantom projects?
Circular Fuels is also due to be built at Dorman Point, although there’s been no action since it was announced four years ago, and it may not happen. Lackenby is supposed to be getting the four schemes previously mentioned, which will occupy most of the zone. Long Acres’ 270 acres remains almost untouched, but that’s because there’s been no hurry to remediate the land. Its only two investors have quit and gone elsewhere. The Steel House zone is part-occupied by the derelict former headquarters of British Steel. Ben Houchen promised a fictional hotel there more than five years ago. The remainder of the zone will be occupied by an under construction Park+Ride facility.
Get your story straight
Ben Houchen, the TVCA, the STDC and Teesworks Limited have continued to issue contradictory and inaccurate statements about land remediation. They also continue to claim, despite the evidence, that the project runs to 4,500 acres. The above map gives a lie to those exaggerated claims. When you consider that the TVCA has existed for nearly 10 years, the STDC for nine, and Teesworks for nearly six years, and that £560mn of public cash has been spent on remediation, the outcomes to date are woeful.
It’s time to call it quits
On 24 March 2026, Peter Morris reported for North East Bylines on the probable demise of the Middlesbrough Development Corporations (MDC). The MDC’s remaining assets will be transferred to the Hartlepool Development Corporation in an attempt to keep that afloat. Given the serial failure of the STDC to achieve its outcomes, and its clear inability to deliver value for money, its abolition must also be considered. Ongoing decisions by the STDC’s private sector counterpart, Teesworks, to keep handing over vast sums of cash to a handful of investors, are a flagrant disregard of the STDC’s responsibility to deliver value for public money. It’s been at least £126mn so far, as detailed here and here. By comparison, the total debt of the public sector STDC had risen to £414.5mn by the end of March 2026.
Best Value Notice
The TVCA is currently subject to a Best Value Notice (BVN) issued by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG). The BVN period is due to expire on 3 April 2026. Repeated governance failures at the three mayoral development corporations demonstrate that mustn’t be allowed to happen.
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.
