Law and disorder
on Teesside:
How Press and
Politicians Fail
Flowers laid near the site of the fatal crash on the A66 where seven people died
Scott Hunter
1 September 2026
The tragedy that unfolded in the early hours of 22 August on the A66 brought lawlessness in ‘Middlesbrough’ to national attention, along with the struggle of Cleveland Police to contain it. Seven people lost their lives when a Volkswagen Passat driving on the wrong side of the carriageway on the A66 at South Bank collided with a police car. Within days, an arson attack on a house in Grangetown brought the death toll to nine.
Accompanying the news reports has been an avalanche of comment, both in the press and on social media as people attempted to exploit the tragedy to promote their own agenda. There are those who, earlier in the week, upbraided Nigel Farage and Reform UK for their lack of comment on these events. Reform UK, in turn, sent their Policing and Crime advisor to Teesside on August 28, who, in turn, berated the government for not sending one single minister there.
One commentator (at least) described the occupants of the Passat, without evidence, as ‘the caravan squad’ while former Middlesbrough mayor, Andy Preston (@centre_right_) referred to them as ‘scrotes’:
Andy Preston was not the only local person who thought it unnecessary to let the world know that neither South Bank nor Grangetown are in Middlesbrough.
That is not to say that Middlesbrough does not suffer the same kinds of problems and with the same intensity as Grangetown and South Bank. It does. But the failure of the national press to differentiate between Middlesbrough and the rest of Teesside is evidence of a general indifference to detail in their reporting. And, all the hand wringing about the social issues that breed this kind of criminality and Cleveland Police lack of resources have already become yesterday’s news.
It is not yesterday’s news for those of us who live in this area, however. The fact that Teesside is a hub in the illegal drug trade remains, and the lawlessness that goes with it. And certain neighbourhoods suffer much more acutely from the consequences of this much more than others.
Given that reporting on these issues is a key aspect of public interest reporting did the local press do any better than the national titles or, for that matter, social media? Few people have a good word for Teesside Live and the Northern Echo, but the events of last week brought into relief just how atrophied their journalism is. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that, as the world looked on, the staff at Teesside Live took the week off. Instead of stepping up to ensure robust and accurate reporting of events, they bought in reports from elsewhere, with reports written variously by journalists from the Daily Express (Callum Hoare), the Daily Mirror (Jeremy Armstrong), and Chronicle Live (Gary Younger) among others.
And we think it unlikely that Callum Hoare of the Daily Express attended in person the incident in Haswell in County Durham where cars were set on fire during a tribute one of those who died in the Passat. So, Teesside Live presented us with a third hand account of that event.
The fact that the A66 crash led to the disorder in an area well beyond Teesside is significant, for what it tells us about the interconnectedness of criminal activity in the wider region. The fact that one of the cars torched was a Porsche, less so. The powers that be at Teesside Live see it differently, however, and one headline was devoted entirely to the Porsche.
Earlier in the week, several of the papers, including a number of Reach plc titles, published an account of a similar gathering in South Bank, a few yards away from the Church of St John the Evangelist where simultaneously a vigil was being held. written by freelance journalist, Kevin Donald. Reach plc title, Teesside Live, was not among them.
While many commentators have stuck with monologues on ‘scrotes’, ‘scumbags’ and the need for more prison places, some have looked at the wider circumstances that have generated the kind of extreme anti-social behaviour exemplified by these tragic incidents. These too, unfortunately, have missed their mark. One that caught our attention was generally level-headed Steph McGovern, who stated the following, as reported in the Northern Echo and elsewhere:
“Middlesbrough is a town that’s been woefully neglected by successive governments and politicians, of all flavours, for decades.”
Steph McGovern then had quite a lot more to say by way of illustration of her opinion. She goes on to discuss the effects of deindustrialisation on communities. The problem with her view is that it is factually inaccurate. We have been unable to contact to discuss her comments and to offer her the following report, from Teesside Live in 2021, which paints a rather different picture:
While the 131 comments that follow that report are largely disparaging, the fact that remains that since 2017 when the Tees Valley Combined Authority and the South Tees Development Corporation were set up, hundreds of millions of pounds of public money have been poured into this region with a view to turning around decades of industrial decline and its wider consequences. The Financial Times (paywall), for example, reported in 2023 that Teesworks was in line for £650 million from the government. Other large sums over the past decade are available.
The 2022 White Paper on Levelling Up showcased Teesside as an example of the success of the government’s levelling up agenda:
While the Conservative government’s ambitions for levelling up the UK have been widely criticized as being bogus, the money that arrived in the Tees Valley is real. It put the Tees Valley on the map.
Except that the success of mayor Ben Houchen was an illusion. The TVCA has loaned vast sums to Teesworks and to Teesside Airport, both of which are likely to default on their debts while delivering little or nothing in the way of regeneration. As Teesworks flounders, the profits made there by two property developers Martin Corney and Chris Musgrave continue, ably supported by the mayor.
On the other hand, we at least know who is profiting at Teesworks. We have little idea of who is profiting from the injections of cash at Teesside Airport. Its affairs are secret, and even when a panel was set up in 2023 to investigate allegations of corruption at the TVCA, the panel members were refused information about the airport.
As for Gove, Teesside was ripe for political manipulation. He could claim whatever he wanted about Teesside to an audience of the Tory faithful. Few of them were ever going to turn up here to see it for themselves. And for those that did, a hi-viz and hard hat photo opportunity awaited them. One famous photo of Rishi Sunak at Teesworks with Houchen shows them on site with a large, shiny industrial plant in the background. Evidence of regeneration at Teesworks? Not at all. The plant in question was the biomass plant at Tees Dock, i.e. on land owned by PD Ports, not part of the largely empty Teesworks at all.
The Teesworks site may, in future, provide employment for a few hundred people, but is unlikely to be more. Teesside Airport, similarly. The promised ‘twenty thousand well-paid jobs’ at Teesworks exist only in the imaginations of the Tory faithful. For all of Michael Gove’s bluster, the millions of public money and Ben Houchen’s well-oiled propaganda machine, there has been no regeneration. Those who can, leave. For a significant number of those who can’t, a life of crime and anti-social behaviour remains an option.
So, a question hangs over the Tees Valley mayor: given that the thousands of high-paying jobs he promised have not materialized, that the money that has poured into this region has landed in the pockets of a very small group of developers and their associates, that where there are no jobs, crime will flourish, does he accept that he bears some responsibility for the twin tragedies we witnessed last week?
Following his recent op-ed in the Daily Mail, we suspect that his answer will be negative.
“No amount of polite language should be allowed to disguise what is driving this. These are not misunderstood young men who took a wrong turn.
“They are criminals, plain and simple, chasing money and status through drugs and intimidation.
“They have been allowed to flourish because for years the people who hold the levers of policing and criminal justice have been soft where they ought to have been hard.
“This is not just a Middlesbrough problem, but symptomatic of Underclass Britain. This is the world where worklessness, drugs and benefits have become a way of life,” says the mayor.
So, a bit cultural conditioning and a bit congenital. In identifying a so-called ‘underclass’ and a ‘world of worklessness’ Houchen and the rest of the ‘scrotes-and-scumbags’ lobby write off communities while condemning those engaged in criminality.
Now, some may find Houchen’s denial of responsibility unpalatable, but at least we have his opinion on the ‘Middlesbrough problem’.
One person we have heard little from is Chris Cooke, mayor of Middlesbrough. He has issued two brief statements on social media, one on 24 August, another on 28th, the first expressing sadness after the crash, the second expressing support for Cleveland Police. Such was the dearth of comment that we wrote to Middlesbrough Council last week to ask if we’d missed something. But we hadn’t. So, for much of the week, right-wing rent-a-quote, Andy Preston, was left to fill the void.
While it’s true that the two major events did not happen in Middlesbrough, the problem lawlessness, anti-social behaviour, and drug trafficking are as much problems for Middlesbrough as they are for Redcar and Cleveland.
There is a conversation to be had here about the conditions that breed the kind of criminality that we saw last week. Will the local press take the lead in that conversation? It looks unlikely. And the Middlesbrough mayor no more so.
Yet the information is in the public domain. The Independent Commission on Neighbourhoods has identified what they call “mission critical neighbourhoods” across England. These are neighbourhoods characterized by low levels of economic activity, high welfare dependency, high crime levels, and low productivity. They comprise about 2% of the neighbourhoods in the country, 613 in total. 22 of them are in Middlesbrough. The Commission predicts that, without affirmative action being taken, the issues faced by these communities will continue to deteriorate. In a town the size of Middlesbrough, that affects everyone (these 22 constitute a quarter of the total number of neighbourhoods in the town). Redcar has fewer such neighbourhoods, but both Grangetown and South Bank feature in their list.
Much has been said recently about policing and the problems faced by Cleveland Police in dealing with inner-city levels of crime on a budget that resembles that of a rural force. But policing alone does not address the range of issues faced by those ‘mission critical neighbourhoods’. And the publicity seeking of Andy Preston and the blame shifting of Ben Houchen are less than helpful here. A willingness to engage in constructive dialogue is essential to shift the dial on the issues faced by these communities. Demonising people is counterproductive. But constructive dialogue also requires media that engages with local issues rather than relying on clickbait. The events of last week highlight just how far away we are from resolving those issues.
Teesside Live were offered a right of reply to the criticism of their reporting made here. We received no response.
At the time of publication, the following links are not functioning. We have retained them here in the hope that they will, at some point be restored.
https://www.neighbourhoodscommission.org.uk/mission-critical-map/
https://www.gazettelive.co.uk/news/teesside-news/michael-gove-claims-teesside-shows-21757253