A row over a local roundabout in the north-east of England has thrown a spotlight on the way the Tory party’s most high-profile regional mayor conducts his business.
Ben Houchen, mayor of Tees Valley, is accused of “strong-arming” Redcar and Cleveland council, threatening to withhold promised investment unless it agreed to move the roundabout. The mayor’s office has strongly denied the accusation.
Since 2017, Houchen has been the standard-bearer for the Conservative government’s attempts to win support in traditional Labour-voting areas across northern England. The dispute comes during a government inquiry into the mayor’s decision-making, prompted by concerns over finances and governance.
With connections at the top of government, Houchen was given a peerage earlier this year and his fortunes in next May’s mayoral election will be watched closely by Tory high command.
Houchen has long had plans to regenerate Redcar’s large former steelworks at Teesworks, Europe’s biggest brownfield site, as part of a programme to boost the area’s local economy. But the roundabout, on Smith’s Dock Road in Redcar, has become the latest in a series of question marks hanging over that project.
The South Tees Development Corporation, the Houchen-chaired body tasked with preparing the site for development, began building the roundabout in 2018.
Planning documents show its footprint strays a few metres on to land owned by next-door PD Ports, which owns and manages Teesport, with whom the project had positive relations at the time.
Since then relations have soured and in 2021, the development corporation launched legal action against the port over access rights. The roundabout and land around it have become integral to that dispute.
Internal council emails seen by the Financial Times show that Houchen’s office began talking last autumn to Redcar and Cleveland council, which has planning and highways authority over the land, about moving the roundabout off PD’s land.
After initially offering to carry out the work, council managing director John Sampson revoked the offer on February 13, the emails showed. A planning application would be needed after all, he said, because his highways department was too stretched to carry out the work.
The council’s Labour leader, Alec Brown, later said the mayor then threatened to withhold regeneration funding from the authority, one of the most deprived in the country.
“I can confirm that there was a suggestion of — in emails and other communications — there was a suggestion of withholding funds, from the TVCA (Tees Valley Combined Authority), until the roundabout had been delivered,” he told fellow councillors last month.
Less than three weeks later, Sampson met with Julie Gilhespie, chief executive of the Houchen-chaired TVCA, which oversees Teesworks and provides funding for local authorities, to discuss the roundabout.
Gilhespie told him that “we are reluctant” to submit a planning application, in case PD Ports objected. After the meeting, Sampson told colleagues that Redcar’s regeneration funding had been frozen.
“She confirms that Ben H has put a hold on a range of funds coming to us,” he wrote on March 6, including in relation to match funding for “Towns Deal” projects, regeneration schemes partly funded by the government.
Another senior officer emailed colleagues to warn that if the relevant funding was not released by May, it would have a “significant impact” on several projects.
The projects at risk included a new coastal activities centre, an upgrade to Redcar Central station and a further 18 projects that were also awaiting TVCA funding approval.
Redcar officers ultimately agreed to authorise the roundabout alteration without the need for a planning application, by subcontracting the construction work. In mid-April Sampson wrote that the council was now “good to go”, “should the funding for other projects is [sic] released”.
Ultimately, the funding was released and the roundabout was not moved.
In a statement, the council said its Towns Deal projects are proceeding as planned.
A TVCA spokesman said it was “categorically untrue” that money “due” to Redcar council had been withheld. It said any delays had been down to the council failing to provide the necessary information or business case.
The mayor’s office said the claims were “complete nonsense, the Labour leader of Redcar and Cleveland council has made clear, with advice from officers, that no funding has been withheld”.
The government said match funding was a matter for mayors. However, Liberal Democrat councillor Tristan Learoyd, chair of Redcar’s planning committee, accused Houchen of “using public funds as a weapon to strong-arm another council’s officers”.
“His bully boy threat of withholding funds was not only an example of authoritarian governance but was morally reprehensible, as Redcar is one of the poorest communities in the UK,” he added.
The roundabout remains at the heart of bitter ongoing High Court action. In July, total legal costs in the case stood at more than £4.5mn.
