The TVCA Cabinet Meeting at Teesside Airport on 20 December 2024 was the last public meeting of the year. Festive cheer abounded, with TVCA CEO Julie Gilhespie dressed as Father Christmas, and chair Ben Houchen sporting a dad-style Christmas sweater, a regular seasonal gift courtesy of his old mucker Andy McDonald. Christmassy Ben had flown in from Lapland especially for the occasion. Although to be fair, he’d had to fly to Lapland only hours earlier, because there’s only one flight a year between the two destinations.
Speed reading
Agenda fans will know that these meetings always start with an update from the Mayor. Ben Houchen rattled through it in five minutes, and then the cabinet noted it. But wait a second: The mayor might have been in a hurry to get to the office Secret Santa, but doesn’t the public get a say? We’d submitted 50 questions to the TVCA, after all (see ‘Further Reading 1’ at the end of this article). So I’m going to disregard the apathy of the cabinet, and feature some of those questions below. Then we can imagine what would happen if cabinet members actually subjected Houchen and the TVCA to scrutiny. You know, as opposed to trying to break the Guinness world record for evacuating the Teesside Airport car park.
Job creation
Four of the 50 questions were about job creation in the Tees Valley, or the lack thereof. Some would argue that the pièce de résistance is the pretence that Teesside Airport was brought under public control instead of being wound into an opaque, unaccountable ownership structure. Others might say that the mayor’s promise to bring steelmaking back to Teesside, which he made in 2020 and broke, then repeated in 2024 and broke again has been his most disgraceful gaslighting. My personal favourite, though, is the Houchen job extravaganza, a relentless barrage of distortions and exaggerations about the number of jobs that he’s created.
Think of a number, then double it
So, no talk of jobs at the cabinet meeting, but only hours later, the mayor was on Facebook with another post about job creation.
Houchen has got away with these distortions for so long that we’ve kind of got used to it. But, it’s still worth fact-checking the most blatant claims, such as the two contained in this post. Firstly, a claim that 10,671 jobs have been created in the Tees Valley since 2019. This is a quote from the Investment Plan Performance Report presented to the 20 December TVCA cabinet meeting. The full document can be found in ‘Further Reading 2’ below. A table (Item 7) refers to 10,671 direct jobs that Ben says have been created, plus 7,096 indirect jobs. This is by far the largest claim we have seen for the latter. It’s extremely difficult to quantify or verify indirect jobs, and the sheer scale of numbers quoted here, which cannot be substantiated, is troubling. The table is the TVCA’s own internally produced document, which does not cite any sources. Neither the direct nor indirect job statistics can be relied upon.
Rounding error?
However the table on the preceding page (Item 7) makes a similar claim, this time exactly 10,000 jobs. The TVCA says that this is based on ONS data from 2014 onwards. A red flag here straight away, because the TVCA has only existed since 2016. But that’s not the worst of it. The table does not cite the ONS data source, and it cannot be relied upon. The same table cites a report (Colliers: Teesworks the Silicon Valley of Teesside) which mentions 10,378 ‘pipeline’ (i.e. future) jobs. But the TVCA knows that Colliers’ report was commissioned by Teesworks Limited, in an effort to exaggerate the success of their Joint Venture. It’s not a serious piece of work, and it cannot be relied upon. I’ve linked to it here.
It’s in the pipeline
And we’ve got to be very wary of ‘pipeline’ jobs. Houchen has been promised these hundreds of times since becoming mayor, and his predictions have always been shown to be wildly optimistic. Which brings me back to his Facebook post on 20 December, in which he promises 20,000 jobs. But, he’s not even consistent about that. In the Item 7 table mentioned above, he has another stab at 25,000 jobs. Variety is the spice of life.
Freedom of Information Request
Last month I submitted a FOI request to the TVCA regarding its job claims, specifically asking how many manufacturing jobs have been created at Teesworks. Coincidentally, the TVCA’s response was sent on the same day as the TVCA cabinet meeting. It replied that it didn’t hold the information, and that I would need to obtain it from individual companies. But, at that very meeting, Julie Gilhespie flatly contradicted this, stating that “these are jobs that have been created and reported to us” as part of the TVCA’s performance data. Keeping in mind that the only manufacturing site at Teesworks, the SeAH factory, hasn’t started producing yet,
A good memory is needed
In fact, the TVCA has confirmed several times that they receive jobs data from individual companies. It’s the least you’d expect. In response to a public question to the cabinet meeting on 15 March 2024 (see ‘Further Reading 3′ below), the TVCA stated that 2,295 jobs had been created at the Teesworks site to date. This total was quoted from the Executive Summary of the Tees Valley Review. However, the review team had sourced the information from the TVCA itself. This is yet another example of the TVCA marking its own homework. How could they have got this information in the first place without asking individual companies? And, how many of these jobs were temporary construction jobs? All of them, I would guess.
Accountability, scrutiny, oversight, whatever
Public questions to the TVCA Cabinet, as with questions to all TVCA/STDC public meetings, will need to be answered within ten working days of the meeting on 20 December. But the questions that were submitted to the STDC Board meeting on 5 December weren’t answered until 21 December 2024. Questions to the Audit and Governance meeting on the following day, still haven’t been answered at the time of this publication. Both of these instances breach the TVCA’s own Public Participation Protocol. (See ‘Further Reading 4’ below).
Transport questions
And we’d prefer if the TVCA would address some of the questions rather more urgently than this. For example, it was asked whether it intends to convene an urgent meeting with the relevant authorities to expedite the repairs to the footbridge at South Bank railway station. It’s been closed since 13 October, and no work has been done yet. A source, which I haven’t been able to verify, has suggested that the bridge won’t open until February 2025.
The blame game
At the last meeting of the TVCA Transport Committee, the TVCA’s Director of Infrastructure informed members that the bridge was the responsibility of Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council (RCBC). While this is technically true, it’s really up to the TVCA to take the lead here. Nine months ago, Ben Houchen posed at the footbridge as part of his election campaign, promising to renovate South Bank station at a cost of £40m. He’s done absolutely nothing since, apart from blaming RCBC.
A leisurely journey
In the meantime, there’s the dreaded replacement bus service, which I took recently. This bus, operated by Spencer Graham Coaches Ltd, travels 107 miles from Silloth in Cumbria to Middlesbrough and back each day, a two and a half hour journey in each direction. The bus then operates hourly, starting at Middlesbrough station, calling at South Bank and Redcar stations then returning empty to Middlesbrough to repeat the process. This happens 16 hours each day. Drivers take it in turns to stay overnight at a local hotel. But hardly anybody uses this service. The driver told me that he’d made 12 trips the previous day and carried only 6 passengers in the entire shift. For a supposedly green form of transport, this is insane. And the eye-popping cost of all this? That’ll be added to your train fares.
Travel for care leavers
Where were we? Oh yeah, the TVCA cabinet meeting. Occasionally something useful happens at these meetings, and that can blindside you. Two of the five leaders of the TVCA constituent authorities, Middlesbrough mayor Chris Cooke, and Hartlepool council leader Brenda Harrson, brought pressure to bear on Houchen to bring forward funding of free travel passes for care leavers. Mayor Cooke is in fact a care leaver himself so his life experience will be a factor here. The Tees Valley mayor has been prevaricating on this issue for months now. Compare this attitude to the introduction of the £1 fares cap for under 21s, introduced by Houchen in January 2024 as part of his re-election campaign launch. The fares cap costs £3.5m. The care leaver pass would be far cheaper to implement, but there aren’t as many votes in it.
Governance and appointments
This was the final agenda item of the meeting. The press and public were excluded from the largest portion of this item, but we can take a guess at what transpired. Firstly, on 14 December 2024, somebody at the TVCA leaked information about a “revised senior management structure” to the Local Democracy Reporting Service. According to the leak, the “revisions” were due to the impending retirement of Julie Gilhespie, and included the proposed promotion of John Barnes from Chief Operating Officer (COO) to replace Julie as Chief Executive Officer of the STDC. Barnes’ appointment will have been confirmed during the closed session of the meeting.
John Barnes plays a blinder
The second item for discussion will have been the confirmation of the appointment of COOs at both Hartlepool and Middlesbrough Development Corporations. The papers regarding these appointments were only updated on 18 December 2024 (see ‘Further Reading 5’ below), two days before the TVCA board meeting. This is highly irregular, as papers would normally be made available at least 10 days before a meeting. But good news for John Barnes, whose meteoric rise through the ranks continues unabated, having only been in the position since May 2024: He was on the selection panel for both COO roles. The other two panel members were Ben Houchen and Julie Gilhespie. The identity of the successful candidates is confidential at this stage.
Brylcreem Boys
The last moments of the meeting were drowned out by the racket of a jet engine. Outside on the runway, the pilot of a stationary RAF Typhoon was gunning his engines at full thrust. It’s an expensive way to charge your batteries. Although this is chump change when you’re spaffing away an inordinate amount of cash every year just on debt interest. Teesside Airport’s debt pile now stands at £150mn.
Thanks to James Waterson for contributing to this article
Further Reading
(1) Public questions to TVCA Cabinet meeting, 20 December 2024
(2) Investment Plan Performance Report presented to TVCA Cabinet meeting, 20 December 2024
(3) Public questions to TVCA Cabinet meeting, 15 March 2024
(4) TVCA Public Participation Protocol
(5) Governance and Appointments, TVCA Cabinet meeting, 20 December 2024
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