The Tees Valley review raised value for £ concerns about some further proposed deals with the Teesworks developers.

South Tees Development Corporation then appears to have told them it was no longer pursuing the deals.

It turns out that it is

on.ft.com/3VahA7q At least two of the proposed deals (per legal advice from October 2023) involved Teesworks Ltd asking the public sector to take on further liabilities, according to the govt review.

Another push as the free views probably ran out.

The Teesside taxpayer is now on the hook for £4m+ after the mayor/Teesworks tried to ransom the area’s biggest private sector employer - and then conclusively lost at the high court

on.ft.com/49vD2I1 This is far too long a saga to relay in a thread but, in brief:

PD Ports runs the port next to Teesworks and is the statutory harbour authority for the Tees. In March 2021, the development corporation overseen by Ben Houchen launched legal action against it over access

A brief thread on what it’s like to read a South Tees Development Corporation board paper. Approx one third of next week’s agenda is devoted to the declarations of interest procedure, which as we know is rigorously adhered to 1/ There then follows a report about landfill tax exemptions, much of which is about “onerous” environment agency rule changes now making it harder to dump toxic waste /2

A more in depth look at what that Teesworks report actually found (free to read for the first 300):

on.ft.com/49kbiX6 Will do that mega thread soon, not forgotten my somewhat hasty promise

On great rail cancellations, a reminder that the expansion of Piccadilly, intended to alleviate the chronic northern rail bottleneck in the centre of Manc, was promised a decade ago, then put on ice, messed about with and actually only officially cancelled a few months ago. The Transpennine upgrade? Well

on.ft.com/3IOV8bW

PD Ports, which owns the port next door to Teesworks - and is also in the Teesside freeport - accused Houchen of ‘inaccurate’ public statements re a case that has been rumbling on for two years
on.ft.com/3N0VGOK The development corporation sued PD over access in 2021. In court papers at the time, PD said it had been directly told by a corporation board member (an allegation that is denied) that the goal was to force a distressed sale: drive down the port’s value, buy it cheap and flip it

Ok so, here goes. My (long-researched) attempt to explain why so many allegations are flying about in relation to Ben Houchen, the former steelworks in Redcar and, by extension, the Teesside freeport

enterprise-sharing.ft.com/redeem/d1051c0… (It is not completist, because as anyone who has followed this knows, that would be impossible to attempt in six articles let alone one.)

In my continual bid to understand complicated things then see if I can explain them, here is a piece on why English mayors argued for fiscal decentralisation in the budget - plus the obstacles to that…and why we are SUCH an international outlier
enterprise-sharing.ft.com/redeem/5ec9f20… (First 300 free to read)

h/t to @JackTShaw for spotting this deal has been published in detail. it moots a potential "grand committee" of MPs for scrutiny of Burnham, which is something Burnham had himself suggested to Gove last month

https://twitter.com/JackTShaw/status/1636034547648217089

Grand Committees currently exist for Scotland, Wales and NI, but the regional ones were scrapped in 2010.

Excl: An interesting twist to the latest chapter in English devolution.

Pressure from various quarters for greater mayoral accountability means both Andys Burnham and Street will face quarterly mini select committees of MPs

enterprise-sharing.ft.com/redeem/8f9b76f… Every time I’ve spoken to anyone in GM about the trailblazer in the last six months the thing they have whispered - apart from whatever technical bit of progress had been made with Whitehall - has been ‘watch the accountability stuff’

And the fact the story was right has just been confirmed in the HoC by levelling up minister Lee Rowley. There has been no change to the govt’s levelling up policies or goals, he says, or the dept’s overall budget. Lisa Nandy calls the situation ‘absurd’

https://twitter.com/jenwilliams_ft/status/1623605167802163201

Lee Rowley: “There are no implications for the government’s levelling up agenda.”

Excl: Treasury bans levelling up secretary Michael Gove from spending ANY money on capital projects without its approval, due to value for money concerns

enterprise-sharing.ft.com/redeem/b56ed4b… As I understand it there have been HMT concerns about management of levelling up funds (of which there are many) within DLHUC for some time, including underspends - ie money not getting out fast enough - and qs over whether what is being spend can show value for money

New: govt has written to scores of local authorities asking them to express interest in having a low tax, low reg investment zone. Insists in its letter there is ‘no q’ of ‘imposing’ this on places, but that this is an ‘extraordinary offer’ nonetheless
enterprise-sharing.ft.com/redeem/2a606e8… Having an investment zone could include, it says:

ICYMI, I was intrigued to know how the very public Thatchering of the Tory leadership debate would go down in the north east.

on.ft.com/3dCOEl3 Main takeaway for me: policies largely not remembered fondly; even Tory cllrs said this. But a fair few said that while they didn’t agree re poll tax, pit closures, they did at least feel she represented strong leadership. There’s a yearning for some leadership.

Happy Friday night Omg the Rishi video they’ve just shown is, well it’s meant to be like a Guy Ritchie trailer I think but with Rishi. ‘Britain laaaves an underdog’. I can’t show you the video so you’ll just have to imagine it

Burnham is right that newsnight are conflating today’s strike with the Avanti situation. They’re different situations I don’t like the ‘mainstream media’ whinge really. Plenty of us have reported on it in depth. But there’s a very specific situation happening with avanti

Remember those devolution trailblazers announced in the levelling up white paper? Well, this is (mainly) what Andy Burnham and Andy Street are asking for

on.ft.com/3vOv7V4 GM want other things too, around eg housing - some degree of control around LHA - and train stations, which are in a right state, and 🚨workplace parking levy🚨 (to fund shortfalls in bus franchising £ I suspect) but skills is the big game in town

New research out from @IPPRNorth today shows public spending since ‘levelling up’ was unveiled - three years ago this week - has risen more in London than anywhere else; lowest rises in the north. It says levelling up has been ‘business as usual’ This is clearly in the context of the pandemic so they’ve tried to analyse it both with & without additional Covid support, eg furlough. Whether you include that or not, they believe £ per head rose on London v everywhere else. Going to drill down a bit further today

Levelling up, is it

Services are being reduced; town centres are empty, ASB is up, says an audience member.

This is the kind of thing @racheljanetwolf has been warning about Hurrah, an intervention from @ChrisMasonBBC. Shout out for the big northern newspaper campaign released tonight warning them not to forget about the north. He points out that where levelling up has been a thing, it’s cost billions and taken decades

Interesting Lab have got Jim O’Neill in to look at making Britain ‘the best country in the world’ to start a new business. Formerly co-architect of Northern Powerhouse with Osborne (and minister in that govt). His latest on the current situation:
on.ft.com/3zvvtC0

Govt announced Transpennine Rail Upgrade between Mcr and Leeds in 2011, started design work on it, stopped work, restarted it, then 2017 onwards changed their minds over and over again, wasting nearly 1/5 their budget as they went. Still not started

on.ft.com/3IOV8bW Should have been complete in 2019; it wasn’t, because it still hadn’t started and govt (under Grayling at that point) kept changing plans.

Instead in 2019, 38% of trains on that line ran on time.

It will now be finished 2030 at the earliest.