Devolution Fever

Overlooks the

Tees Valley

Conundrum

Scott Hunter

5 August 2026

Britain’s latest prime minister has had a lot to say about devolution over the past couple of weeks. He seems to be very keen on it and there was even a Cabinet Office statement published last Friday (here). At Tees Valley Monitor we share his conviction that devolved government can serve regions like ours better than the Whitehall-based top-down system that persists at present. But only up to a point.

In addition to the Cabinet Office statement, we have also recently enjoyed a report from the think tank Re:State, and an editorial in The Guardian all of which completely ignore the elephant in the room, the basket case of English devolution, the Tees Valley Combined Authority. Following the Guardian editorial on 31 July, we wrote in to the paper highlighting the issues that we think the ongoing chaos at the TVCA illustrate and why plans for extended devolution need to take them into account.



We are pleased that the Guardian printed most our letter.  It’s here and a couple of the bits they edited out are below it:

The Guardian, letters, 5 August 2026

The first section delicately excised by the Guardian relates to the contribution made by local council leaders:

“The mayor is the sole elected person in the Authority and happens to be an autocrat. Leaders of local councils form the Authority cabinet but do so in addition to their day job. Mayor manipulates them by withholding information on the one hand and intimidation on the other. Local Authority leaders react like rabbits in the headlights.”

Tees Valley Monitor has previously reported on instances where officers of the authority have sought to intimidate local councillors who serve on TVCA committees and on the Airport board. In addition, we have reported on TVCA additional cabinet meetings being held in camera, while official meetings to which the public is invited last no more than a few minutes and serve only to rubber stamp decisions that have been taken previously. But even before this tactic was introduced in earnest, and official meetings were full length, local council leaders’ objections to proposals (for example the public funding of a new airport hangar for Airborne Colours) were never more than performative.

How do you silence a council leader? By threatening to withhold funding for projects. And you silence a councillor by threatening them with disciplinary action. Simples.

The Guardian’s second edit is the last sentence, which they removed altogether:

“Houchen is unlikely to be devolution’s last autocrat.”

While the ongoing scandal around the Tees Valley Authority continues, with no resolution in sight to the issues around the audit of accounts among other things, we have to question whether in the new age of extended devolution in England, the Tees Valley’s issues are simply legacy ones and that, in future, mayors of other combined authorities will not be unable to run things in the way that Houchen has done. Our view is that, unless some acknowledgement is given of the changing dynamics of regional politics under devolution and how to manage it, there remains scope for others to trash the devolution settlement and leave local people in the lurch in much the same way that we have experienced in the Tees Valley.