Ben Houchen

in Bun Fight

at the BBC

Tees Valley Combined Authority mayor, Ben Houchen

Scott Hunter

4 November 2026

Listeners to BBC Radio Tees this morning were entertained to an extraordinary confrontation between TVCA mayor, Ben Houchen, and BBC political editor, Richard Moss. In light of the recent announcement of an new inspection regime set up by to government over concerns about high levels of debt at the Authority, Moss questioned the mayor on the issues involved. The resulting explosion of one talking over the other was reminiscent of the golden years of Newsnight. It got so heated that at one point the show’s presenter, Amy Oakden, had to intervene and demand that only one person spoke at a time.



Unfortunately, she made the fatal error of asking Moss to speak first. So, the altercation broke out all over again about twenty seconds later, the mayor unable to contain himself, started talking over him all over again. There are few things in life that annoy Houchen more, it seems, than being interrupted when he’s in the middle of a diatribe.

The gist of the mayor’s message to the region was that the recent announcement that both the Middlesbrough and Hartlepool development corporations (MDC and HDC) were to close down, is by no means an indication that they have been a failure, even though Middlesbrough mayor, Chris Cooke, said that the MDC has been a flop (we’re paraphrasing at this point). The reason they were being closed was because circumstances had changed. Where, at one time, the rationale for creating these corporations was that they would have control over planning, that was no longer an issue because control over planning was now being given to Combined Authority mayors. And these powers were to be given to all CA mayors, regardless of whether or not their Authorities were under investigation or not.

Furthermore, the original idea of creating these town development corporations was to build on the success of the South Tees Development Corporation (make of that what you will). In fact, it was Michael Gove, then secretary of state for leveling up who, in January 2023, first announced the plan, and stated that its inspiration was the London Docklands Development Corporation. In other respects, Gove has been, however, a longstanding champion of the Tees Valley mayor and all his works.

With regard to the other recent bombshell announcement that the government is imposing and Best Value Inspection, to increase government oversight of the work of the Authority, Houchen explained that people in government don’t understand the decisions being made at the Authority. There are those who are politically motivated to cast doubt on the integrity of the Authority and the work that it does, and this background noise leads the public to believe that there are problems at the Authority when there are none. The mayor welcomes the arrival of inspectors as it will give him the opportunity to demonstrate how nuanced the issues are, and that the background political noise is mischief making.

So, in short, mischief makers have the government’s ear, which responds by setting up investigations. Houchen’s response is to welcome all scrutiny because the Authority has nothing to hide. The mayor, in fact, repeats several times that he was the one who requested that an inquiry be set up in 2023, which demonstrates a large measure of economy with the truth.

Moss interjects that the Tees Valley Review, published in January 2024, was not the work of mischief makers but of impartial civil servants. Yet they ended up making 26 recommendations for reforms to the way the Authority was run.

Houchen’s response to this was to characterize the recommendations as being largely administrative, tidying up the stationery cupboard kind of reforms. At this point Moss misses an open goal. He can’t remember what the 26 recommendations were so can’t pin Houchen down. In fact, he needed only to remember one, which was that, in the light of the Authority’s extraordinary generosity to the property developers, Corney and Musgrave, that they set about renegotiating some of the contracts with them, to render them more in line with the public interest.

When, in the summer 2024, the then CEO both of the TVCA and STDC, Julie Gilhespie, set about doing precisely that, she did so by writing the developers a letter asking for the renegotiation of contracts. The developers refused, and that was the end of it. Add to that the refusal of external auditors to sign off several years’ worth of TVCA accounts and it is little wonder that the government is not entirely convinced that everything is quite as rosy as the mayor would have us believe.

Moss can perhaps be forgiven for missing this golden opportunity as by this time he and the mayor were talking over each other, with Houchen accusing him of bias. A number of elements in the media, he would have us believe, are biased against him. And Moss reveals his bias in the way that he phrases his questions.

There is something strangely familiar in all of this. Here we have someone that malign political actors and sections of the media are doing their best to undermine. It reminds us of a well-known president that Houchen invited to Teesside in November 2024.

It appears that the president in question did not reply, as, come February 2025, the Northern Echo was reporting the efforts of Nigel Farage to persuade him to make the visit. Presumably, the mayor gave up on it after that. We, for our part, are wondering if now would be a good time to resend the invitation as the president in question may be in the market to forge some new friendships.