(Image: SARAH CALDECOTT)
In the run-up to the 2024 General Election, Labour figures from Sir Keir Starmer downwards said there should be a National Audit Office inquiry into the Tees Valley Combined Authority, with special regard for the private/public deal concerning the redevelopment of the Teesworks site.
And although that full scale investigation is yet to materialise, yesterday the Government finally announced there is to be a “Best Value Inspection” into the authority and its complicated financial arrangements.
This has to be welcome, both for reasons of transparency, scrutiny and accountability, and also because the allegations swirling around Teesworks have not gone away.
This new inspection has to clear the air and provide concrete reassurances to local people in a way that the 2024 Tees Valley Review did not.
That review found no evidence of criminality but gave 28 serious recommendations about improvements at TVCA, and suggested the “joint venture” deal at the heart of the concerns should be renegotiated.
But it just left things hanging at that, without providing clarity that the deal was a good one for the public interest.
It is positive that this new inspection will report quickly, by March next year, because the ramifications could be far reaching, involving Teesside Airport and even the proposed Darlington north relief road.
And this is important beyond the Tees Valley.
Andy Burnham’s government is committed to greater (and welcome) devolution to mayors and yet this is the second expensive inquiry into this mayoral authority in three years, an authority which has had a steady churn of very well paid executives running it.
There must be an accountable way of bringing greater devolution to the people without it requiring such an expensive bureaucracy of civil servants, inspectors and reviewers.