Tees Valley Mayor Ben Houchen has pledged to build a new hospital for Teesside as he launched his election campaign for a third term.
He kicked off his “Back Ben” campaign with a promise to build a new hospital to replace the University Hospital of North Tees, while admitting he had no control over health services and saying: “It’s not going to be easy, and you never know, it might not happen.
“But I’m promising the people of Teesside, Darlington and Hartlepool, that if re-elected we will do just that. We will build that brand new hospital.”
He told business leaders at the event at Teesside International Airport Business Park on Monday morning (January 8): “From my point of view the biggest challenge we face is is our health inequality across the region. We’ve seen it lurch from one crisis to another.”
He said the NHS was trying to deliver as much as it could and doctors, nurses and support staff were doing their best in a system which was failing them, nationally and locally. He added in his speech: “We’ve not been fortunate enough to secure any money so far in better health provision in this area.”
A new NHS diagnostic centre is being built in Stockton town centre, expected to open in summer 2024. But an £80m bid for a new hospital was knocked back by the government last May, with just eight years’ life left in the current North Tees hospital buildings.
“So I’m going to step in,” Mr Houchen continued. “And the one policy that we are announcing today is that if I’m re-elected in May, I will build Teesside the brand new state-of-the-art hospital it deserves.
“North Tees Hospital is quite literally falling down. They’re spending many millions of pounds a year just patching up the state of that hospital to keep it going day-to-day
“That can’t go on forever,” he added, saying it would be cheaper to borrow the money to build a new hospital and repay the debt than keep maintaining the existing one.
“I have no control over the health services. I have no role in the NHS. I have no role in health provision. But the one thing I do know is how to deliver things, and I know how to build things and I know how to get things done.
“So my role I can play is building a brand new state-of-the-art hospital on Teesside that can be the facility for our incredible NHS staff and support services and social services… to be able to deliver exactly what we need, which is a plan to deal with health inequalities across all of our local communities, and that’s what I’m promising today that we will deliver that hospital.
“It’s not going to be easy, but nothing I ever do is. I would hope that a lot of people in this room would at least give me the benefit of the doubt.
“Whether it’s the airport, whether it’s Teesworks, whether it’s the transport system, whatever it is, when we say we’re going to do it, we’re going to do it.”
He said he had wanted to create an excitement for investors to bring something new, but his speech heralded a shift in focus: “I’m extremely proud. What we’ve been able to do is completely shake up the local economy. My vision of how you change our local region is very different to other local leaders.
“My view is you can’t change a place like Teesside tinkering around the edges. You’ve got to do something big, bold, risky.
“Because of those big projects that we’re delivering, I am confident, I know exactly where the thousands of jobs are coming from. The jobs are now coming.
“Creating jobs and bringing investors is all of a sudden going down and down my list because we’ve created this momentum, we’re creating this force of nature. Businesses are excited, they can see the opportunity.
“The biggest challenge we have now is not jobs, it’s not investors. Our biggest challenge is local people.
“I don’t want to stand here in 10 years’ time and see Teesworks transformed, three million square feet of sheds built on this south side, full of life, full of jobs, but actually local people would not be able to get the opportunity of getting one of those jobs.
“That’s my biggest concern, that we create lots of jobs but those jobs are filled by people from elsewhere. We want to make sure that local people have those opportunities.
“That’s what I think the next four years is about. We’ve done the infrastructure, we’ve done the big building blocks. We now want to make sure local people are put at the forefront of what we want to do.”
He said he would be setting out election pledges and plans for the “next chapter” with more announcements in the coming weeks, saying it would be different to what had come before: “We’ll still be building some fantastic stuff. We still have to spend this £1bn of transport money on infrastructure, but what we need to do is help local people.
“A big part of that will be around skills and training to make sure local people have those opportunities for those new jobs… so little Johnny or little Jane in school now knows they don’t have to move away for a better life,” he added, referring to Net Zero Teesside for carbon capture, the digital sector and professional services.
“Let’s look back over the last 20 years. We started with very little. We started with no plan. We started with a period of terminal decline and failure of local leadership and local authorities.
“And I think over the last six, seven years we’ve come a long, long way. We’ve got a long way to go but we are achieving incredible things and we’re delivering on those things.”
