TVCA Director
Appointment Lays
Bare Inadequacy
of Government
Oversight of
Failing Authority
Scott Hunter
23 July 2026
27 June saw a rare moment of joy for the beleaguered Tees Valley Combined Authority as both Teesside Live and the Northern Echo carried their press release that a new Chief Monitoring Officer, Andrew Perriman, had just been appointed. Gone are the golden years when, as in November 2020, the Northern Echo published twelve articles about the progress being made at Teesside Airport. Nowadays reports are few and far between and often dwell on matters, like the unresolved issues with the external auditors, that those in charge of the Authority would rather not talk about.
Still, one thing that remains intact is the willingness of both local papers never to read between the lines of TVCA press releases, and just uncritically regurgitate them. Both papers reported that the appointment had followed a robust and extensive recruitment process. The original release, published on the TVCA’s own newsfeed on the other hand begins with it:
“The appointment of Andrew Perriman follows a robust and extensive recruitment process involving a range of internal and external partners …” Robust. Reassuring.
But why mention it? Is it not a given that an appointment to a public body will be the result of a robust and extensive recruitment process? Not, it seems, at the TVCA, which has previous with regard to ‘robust recruitment’ processes. Most notorious is the recruitment, in 2020, of property developers, Corney and Musgrave, as joint venture partners both at Teesside Airport and at Teesworks whose companies have made substantial profits, while the projects they are associated with are struggling.
The prominence given to the ‘robust process’ in the TVCA news item therefore arouses suspicion. Was the Best Value Notice panel involved in the recruitment process? The panel chair, Rob Whiteman, informed us that one panel member had been involved in initial vetting of candidates but not in interviews.
Now, routine candidate vetting for a post such as this would involve checking prospective candidates are suitably qualified and that nothing in their career history that would disbar them. Candidate vetting at an Authority such as the TVCA that is under investigation, where issues of financial irregularity are ongoing, and appointments are believed to have been made in the past without due impartiality, perhaps needs to be more searching, and responsibility for leading that initiative we might expect to fall on the BVN panel.
The BVN panel is not public facing, so much of what it does is not immediately apparent. What is apparent is that, fifteen months after the BVN was put in place, the Authority’s accounts are still to be accepted by the external auditor, both the South Tees Development Corporation and Teesside Airport may be about to default on their debts, and there have been a number of resignations of high ranking officials.
The relationship between the Authority and the BVN panel appears to be much warmer than we might have expected, however. Mr Whiteman also informed us that the panel “… would be happy to be involved in future appointments which is a decision for TVCA.”
So, contrary to the public’s expectations, the BVN panel carries out at least some of its work at the behest of the TVCA. Not quite the independent, investigative body we were expecting, then.
There remains, then, the question of what the BVN panel member might have questioned had they been suspicious that one candidate might be preferred on account of being linked to the mayor’s social network. Undisclosed to the public is the matter of whether the candidate was head hunted. And similarly unknown, therefore, is the question of whether the participation of members of the BVN panel in the recruitment process prevents the mayor from hiring loyalists to senior roles in the failing Authority.
Houchen loyalists
By the time the appointment had been made, announced, and the candidate loudly endorsed on Teesside Live’s Facebook page by prominent Houchen supporter and local businessman, Mike Hind MBE, it was too late for the BVN panel to ask questions.
But the BVN panel might reasonably have been expected to take a critical look at the C.V. of each candidate to look for evidence of a connection between any candidate and the mayor. So, for example, any candidate who may have been a student at Northumbria University made the acquaintance of one Ben Houchen who was also studying Law there at that time. Circumstantial, but did anyone ask the question?
As for Mike Hind MBE, he was himself once loudly endorsed by former Middlesbrough mayor, Andy Preston:
That’s Andy Preston, vocal supporter of Ben Houchen:
One thing those vetting candidates for senior posts at TVCA with a critical eye might be reasonably expected to notice are significant events in a person’s c.v. in case there is evidence that a career may have been in some way gilded.
One item in the c.v. of Andrew Perriman is of particular note. The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) lists him as having been admitted as a qualified solicitor in August 2019. His c.v. (published on Linked In) states that he became Principal Solicitor at Middlesbrough Council one month later, a remarkable elevation for someone so newly qualified. Andy Preston himself had been elected mayor only a few months earlier.
There followed years of turbulence during which time Preston was accused of making an unlawful appointment (for clarity, this was not Perriman), and the council was eventually issued with a Best Value Notice by the government).
By 2024, now Head of Legal Services, Mr Perriman left a few months after Preston failed to be re-elected in the election in May of that year. At the time there was no vacancy for monitoring officer at TVCA as the post holder, having been employed on temporary contracts for over two years, had been made permanent. Her sudden departure in 2025 led to the appointment of two others, both also on temporary contracts. It is therefore an uncharacteristically bold move by the Authority to employ someone in this role immediately on a permanent basis, and also to elevate the post holder to director status.
The Monitoring Officer and the BVN panel
As the BVN panel is not public facing, we do not know if the panel member who participated in the vetting process noticed or was concerned by any of the facts we have assembled here. That is, in itself a weakness in the Best Value process. The people of the Tees Valley have been promised economic regeneration, but the Authority that is charged with delivering it is so dysfunctional that the government has felt obliged to step in with additional oversight. But there is no obligation on the BVN panel to provide the public with any reassurance that matters are being effectively dealt with.
Last week, leader of Redcar and Cleveland Council, Alec Brown, briefly voiced his concerns about unresolved issues at the TVCA. That, in itself, would indicate that the work of the BVN panel is not achieving cut through. The resignation at short notice of the highly respected interim director of finance, Jo Moore, is a further indication the dysfunction continues.
The BVN panel has been in place now for fifteen months. The decision of the external auditors to reject the TVCA accounts once again will undoubtedly result in that panel refusing to bring their oversight to an end. But what difference will it make?
At the heart of the problem is the mayor in whom far too much power is concentrated. This is not the case in other devolved authorities in England, and the BVN panel is either unable or unwilling to address that, to curtail his power of veto over the TVCA cabinet, or to suspend him pending further investigation. Drastic action is needed, but the political will to implement it has, until now, been lacking.
The new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, is an enthusiastic supporter of devolution as a means to bring about the regeneration of English regions. The Monitor shares that enthusiasm in principle, while experiencing frustration at the unwillingness of government to deal effectively with a situation in which no effective action is taken to deal with rogue actors.
If the new regime at 10 Downing Street is to extend the devolution of powers, and bring to an end the overcentralisation of power that has stymied regional growth for decades, it has to be able to deal effectively with the rogue actors that current devolution arrangements tolerate.
Any extension of devolution in English regions that sidesteps responsibility for dealing with the dysfunction at the Tees Valley Authority is destined to fail. What happens here today, could happen anywhere tomorrow.