Tees Valley Mayor Lord Houchen has today written to Angela Rayner following the TVCA cabinet’s decision to approve the response to the Tees Valley Review.
After the meeting of the South Tees Development Corporation (STDC), the Tees Valley Combined Authority (TVCA) cabinet met and much of the time was devoted to discussing the potential response to the review and its recommendations.
The process of curating a response to the Tees Valley Review started earlier this year, after the January publication of the review into the Teessworks site, which made 28 recommendations to make improvements after a panel criticised governance, decisions, transparency and finance, though it found no evidence to support allegations of corruption or illegality.
In a meeting that lasted well over two hours, the report of Julie Gilhespie, Group Chief Executive of the TVCA was examined by cabinet members. The report listed many recommendations for the Combined Authority cabinet, one of which was “the appointment of an Operations Director for TVCA and a single Chief Operating Officer for Middlesbrough and Hartlepool Development Corporations”.
During the meeting there was some dissatisfaction from Labour representatives. Middlesbrough Mayor Chris Cooke said: ”I think structurally the combined authority is not set up to be a combined authority. It is an organisation, whenever we ask for stuff, for example through transport… we’re all asked to submit our ideas.
“Instantly, as soon as we’ve done that, the drawbridge goes up and we don’t receive feedback. It is very much a one-way flow of information. When you talked about the different times that we have been engaged, we’ve been briefed, we’ve never really been involved in the process.”
Mayor Houchen responded to Mayor Cooke, saying, “The process that has been gone through in relation to the review was agreed by cabinet at the beginning of the process, so all of those sub-groups, all of those authority groups that feedback to cabinet where we do feedback our views back into those groups… that whole process and that structure was agreed by cabinet in the beginning, which included yourself.”
Mayor Houchen summarised, “this is not a process that has been imposed upon TVCA cabinet, this is a process that was designed and agreed by TVCA cabinet”.
Mayor Cooke added onto his initial point: “From the very start, I did suggest that there needed to be working groups… This process does not match anywhere near the process that we [at Middlesbrough Council ] have just been through.”
The TVCA Mayor then responded: “I think you’ve got to make a difference there though Chris, because you guys were in special measures and this is a response to a review of the recommendations, so the standard and the requirements are very different.”
Lord Houchen later said: “The response has been developed following one of the most wide-ranging and extensive processes ever undertaken by the Combined Authority and its constituent authorities. It has produced robust and highly detailed response to the Tees Valley Review and I would like to put on record my sincere thanks to all elected members, officers and external bodies who have contributed.”
In his letter to Angela Rayner, Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, Mayor Houchen wrote “Our approach to this work has been to engage with all 28 recommendations and, make the necessary changes to governance required to address any issues.”
“All of these changes have been unanimously approved by all of our cross-party statutory committees, the cross-party South Tees Development Corporation Board, and the Tees Valley Combined Authority Cabinet, which is made up of myself and the five Labour local authority leaders.”
He went on to write: “In terms of monitoring the way in which the new processes are managed and, importantly to ensure that they are imbedded into the culture of the organisation, a Local Government Association panel, chaired by Rob Whiteman, has also been appointed to work with the Tees Valley Combined Authority to support and provide independent oversight of the implementation of the new processes and to undertake the training required, as identified in the Tees Valley Report.”
Mayor Houchen ended his letter by saying: “I look forward to hearing your response and welcome the opportunity to continue to work positively with this Government to bring success to Teesside, Darlington, and Hartlepool.”
