As Andy Burnham pushes ahead with the biggest transfer of power out of Whitehall in a generation, promising metro mayors greater freedom to borrow and spend, the deafening silence surrounding the Tees Valley raises a critical question: are central safeguards keeping pace with the money being handed out?
Alarm bells
There is a giant alarm going off in Tees Valley. Not a quiet little beep that can be ignored by throwing a cushion over it, but a smoke alarm that has been chirping for years while everyone insists they cannot hear it.
And somehow, just across the Pennines, Andy Burnham appears not to have noticed.
The source of the noise is the Tees Valley Combined Authority (TVCA), where the list of governance concerns has become so long it is starting to resemble a local government version of a supermarket receipt.
A state of disarray
Delayed accounts. Auditor concerns. Senior finance posts changing hands. Questions over scrutiny. Hundreds of millions of pounds of public money tied up in ambitious projects.
Any one of these issues might be explained away. Taken together, they should make anyone interested in the future of devolution sit up and pay attention. Especially those designing the next generation of powerful metro mayors.
Because TVCA is not some strange little experiment happening in isolation. It is a case study sitting in plain sight while Westminster prepares to hand more power to the same model.
The devolution dream meets governance reality
Andy Burnham has spent years arguing that power should leave Westminster and move closer to communities, with his latest national framework pushing to hand metro mayors unprecedented fiscal autonomy and borrowing leeway.
And last week, that vision collided with Tees Valley politics as Burnham and Ben Houchen publicly sparred over what new tax powers metro mayors should receive. It was a lively debate about who should hold more levers of power. The quieter question of whether the governance and scrutiny arrangements around the powers mayors already exercise are robust enough, barely got a mention
Moving power is a popular idea. After all, nobody wakes up in the morning thinking: “I really hope someone in Whitehall has a fresh idea about my bus service.”
Local decision-making matters. Yet as Burnham hands out these expanded powers, his complete silence on the Tees Valley is deafening.
There is a small detail that gets forgotten in the rush to expand mayoral control. Someone still needs to check what happens after those powers arrive.
Handing mayors longer financial reins while ignoring broken scrutiny mechanisms at the TVCA isn’t empowering communities, it’s leaving taxpayers to pick up the bill when things go wrong.
How’s my driving?
Devolution without accountability is a bit like handing someone the keys to a very expensive car and deciding the brakes are an optional extra. The Tees Valley shows why those safeguards matter.
This isn’t best value
Ben Houchen’s TVCA remains under an extended Best Value Notice (BVN) issued by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.
Reports suggest that the BVN could soon be lifted. Which raises a fairly straightforward question: What has changed?
A poor track record
Because this is still the same authority where external auditors have not signed off accounts after years of delays. The same authority that has seen repeated turnover in senior finance and governance roles. The same authority that continues to face questions about transparency and scrutiny.
Perhaps everything is now fixed. If so, the public deserves to know what has changed, when it changed and who independently verified that the problems have actually been resolved.
Budget buster
Part of the answer appears to be financial reassurance. In its latest Cabinet papers, the TVCA points to work by financial advisers Arlingclose. It states, “At the end of the 2026 financial year, STDC owed TVCA £420.6mn, spread across eight separate loan facilities, advanced for various redevelopment projects”. It went on to conclude that the South Tees Development Corporation (STDC) should be able to service its debts after financial stress testing.
That sounds reassuring. And stress testing is an important part of financial planning. Banks use it. Engineers use it. Even your phone battery quietly conducts its own version every day when it decides whether it can make it past lunchtime.
Always rely on a trustworthy source
But stress tests are only as reliable as the information put into them. A model can calculate thousands of possible futures, but it cannot fill in the gaps where the underlying facts are still unknown. Arlingclose’s report contains a disclaimer that “this report has been produced using disclosures and data provided by TVCA, and Arlingclose can make no assurances as to the accuracy of third party information”.
Delayed by red tape
A significant part of the STDC’s future financial plans relies on income linked to the Teesworks site, including business rates. However, the Valuation Office Agency has not yet completed the valuations that will determine what those business rates actually are.
So the financial model is trying to answer the question: “Can we afford this?” While still waiting for one of the key numbers needed to answer it. That does not mean the modelling is wrong. It does mean confidence should come with an asterisk. A large asterisk.
Crash landing?
Then there’s the issue of the debt owed by Teesside Airport. This stands at £128mn, plus £27mn in outstanding interest. The airport has never repaid either principal or interest on its debt to the TVCA. The TVCA appears to have delayed tackling this until its next meeting in September.
The loan that keeps on giving
Then there is the question of who owes the debt.
At the latest TVCA Cabinet meeting, Mayor Ben Houchen said it was in the TVCA’s interest not to repay loans early because doing so would maximise the TVCA’s loan income.
This is an interesting argument. Interest is wonderful when you are receiving it. But less wonderful when you are the one paying it.
It is a little like saying your credit card company is delighted you have not cleared your balance because it is great for their income. Technically true. Less comforting from the cardholder’s perspective.
Borrowing to invest
Of course, public bodies are not households and borrowing can be entirely legitimate.
But when hundreds of millions of pounds of public money are involved, the obvious question is whether keeping debt outstanding is genuinely the best deal for taxpayers, or simply the best deal for the organisation receiving the interest.
Still no scrutiny
And that question apparently did not receive much attention at the meeting. No one pressed the pause button. No one asked the awkward follow-up. Which is, unfortunately, exactly what scrutiny is supposed to exist for.
When someone says debt is working well, taxpayers are entitled to ask: “Working well for whom?”
…and it’s always like this
Scrutiny is meant to be democracy’s seatbelt. It is there for the moment when everyone is enjoying the drive and someone needs to ask whether anyone checked the brakes.
Yet TVCA’s scrutiny arrangements raise uncomfortable questions. Over the past year, the scrutiny committee has requested only one call-in of an executive decision. That request was refused. In fact, it’s the only call-in request made in the nine years of the committee’s existence. One call-in. In nine years. Is that really what effective scrutiny looks like?
Democratic deficit
Meanwhile, officers continue to exercise extensive delegated powers, including decisions involving significant sums of public money. Whilst delegation is normal delegation without meaningful challenge is where the alarm bells start ringing.
In his own words
Ironically, one of the strongest warnings about expanding mayoral powers came from Ben Houchen himself.
Giving evidence to Parliament’s Public Bill Committee in 2025, Houchen argued against simply adding more responsibilities to metro mayors. He said combined authorities had been successful because they had a narrower focus, and warned that continually broadening their remit risked making them “more bureaucratic and less effective”.
If even one of the country’s most prominent metro mayors was warning against expanding powers without the right structures in place, perhaps ministers should take note before rolling out the next phase of devolution.
The lesson nobody wants to learn
The danger is that politicians become so focused on the promise of devolution and its “political capital” with flashy sound bites and headlines that they forget the boring bits.
The boring bits are usually where democracy lives. Audit committees. Scrutiny. Transparency. Financial controls. Nobody campaigns on a slogan of “More robust governance arrangements”. It does not fit neatly on a billboard. But it is the difference between a successful devolution system and one that leaves taxpayers wondering what happened after the ribbon-cutting ceremony.
Ignorance is not bliss
Andy Burnham wants to give communities more power. Good.
But sooner or later, he’s going to have to deal with that TVCA smoke alarm. Putting a cushion over it may make the room seem quieter. But unfortunately, fires have a habit of carrying on regardless.
Eventually, someone has to stop muffling the alarm and find out what’s actually sounding it.
Thank you to Ray Casey for contributing to this article.
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