‘Once-in-a-lifetime’ opportunity
Are the stars finally aligning for the redevelopment of Gateshead? Council bosses certainly hope so with hundreds of new homes, a railway station, and a joined up and better connected town centre all on the agenda.
Anneliese Hutchinson, Gateshead Council’s strategic director for economy, innovation and growth, toured the town centre with Local Democracy Reporter Daniel Holland and told him that the demolition of the flyover and the creation of a Mayoral Development Zone provided a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to reimagine the heart of Gateshead.
"It has been a difficult few years,” she said. “But now we have the means of delivering, with the combined authority and a lot of interest from Homes England and other developers. We are looking at a comprehensive redevelopment that will change the face of the town centre and really make a difference for people.”
However, as reported here last week (Eyes & Ears 02.01.26), plans for an arena and conference centre on the quayside are no further forward and were thrown into further doubt by the announcement that operators Legends Global are to spend £65m on transforming Newcastle’s Utilita Arena.
Zone v Corporation
Sunday’s edition (Mayors, mistakes and mistrust) started with an article that said Mayoral Development Corporations hold the key to delivering the economic growth that Prime Minister Keir Starmer so badly needs.
Just to be clear, MDCs are different from the development zone (MDZ) that North East Mayor Kim McGuinness has set up at the Gateshead Quays and Forth Yards on the other side of the Tyne (a cultural MDZ has also been set up in Sunderland).
An MDZ is an area that the mayor designates for strategic focus, investment and development. MDCs are statutory regeneration bodies with legal powers to deliver development in a defined area (often an MDZ) with their own boards, staff and budgets.
In short, MDZs define where growth should happen, and MDCs decide how it gets delivered. Middlesbrough and Hartlepool have the only two MDCs in the wider North East.
So far.
Quite a dividend
The Teesworks regeneration project paid its shareholders a record £30m in dividends in 2025, bringing the total handed out in two years to nearly £50m.
Accounts for Teesworks Ltd, a public-private initiative to redevelop the site of the former Redcar steelworks, show that shareholders - primarily two companies controlled by local developers Chris Musgrave and Martin Corney - received £29.7m in dividends for the 12 months to March 2025, the FT reported.
This is despite the project recording subdued profits in a year affected by a “slightly hampered” performance.
Private Eye, meanwhile, reports on the bank account with a dwindling balance, as Newsnight presenter Victoria Derbyshire highlights in this Tweet.
Leigh Jones of The Teesside Lead, who has been following the Teesworks story for three years, estimates that the two businessmen have paid themselves, or companies they control, £124,362,866, in the last four financial years.
Businesses reviewed
The business track record of Durham’s council leader Andrew Husband came under scrutiny in The Times this week who reported that several of his companies entered liquidation or administration with combined debts of £1.5m, including unpaid tax and Covid loans.
The Reform councillor gave the case for the defence to Local Democracy Reporter Bill Edgar, telling him: “During Covid, bad government shut down the economy and of course that caused huge problems for all sorts of businesses, especially in hospitality.
“There is no suggestion I have done anything wrong. What is clear, I decided to quite rightly exit from hospitality and all associated businesses. I am not responsible for subsequent failures years and years after.”
You won’t want to miss…
“The same hands that once cracked heads and gripped guns wield a different sort of power – the power to heal”. Liam Geoghegan meets the gangster turned spiritual healer in Sunday’s edition.
Officers suspended
Eight Durham police officers have been under suspension since October following reports of alleged misbehaviour on a holiday in Spain. A sergeant, six PCs and a special constable who are all based in Chester-le-Street are being investigated over allegations that they failed to uphold standards of professional behaviour while they were off-duty.
Says it all
A quick word
Newcastle United have contacted police after midfielder Joe Willock received racial abuse and “deeply disturbing threats” on social media following Sunday’s match against Crystal Palace. Landlord Kamran Adil from Gosforth has been banned from renting out residential properties for two years after a successful application by Durham County Council. Adil repeatedly put vulnerable tenants at risk by failing to ensure minimum safety standards were met. The boss of Citizens Advice in Stockton says the loss of £250,000 of council funding will harm some of the area's most vulnerable residents. Outreach work in Billingham, Thornaby, Ingleby and Norton will be suspended, said CEO Sarah McPhie. Middlesbrough council says reindeer will no longer feature in future Christmas parades after consulting with “various animal welfare groups”.
Writing centre hope
A national writing centre based in Newcastle could be open in two years. The city council’s Cabinet will be asked to sign off a £1m grant on Monday so that the Old Post Office building in the city centre can be purchased before the end of the financial year.
The flagship development, led by charity New Writing North and Northumbria University, is expected to attract publishing businesses and develop a new generation of local talent.
A report to the Cabinet says: “The Centre for Writing is the first of its kind nationally to bring together a cross-section of partners from academia, industry, and the arts into one dynamic site of creative production.”
Sixth formers
The North East’s free three‑month celebration of languages and cultures for children and young people started this week. Express Yourself: North East Festival of Languages is the UK’s largest schools‑focused languages festival and offers hundreds of creative events, workshops and competitions.
Now entering its sixth year, the festival is bigger than ever after funding from North East Mayor Kim McGuinness enabled it to reach even more schools, community schools and groups.
Trio get Polar Medal
The Polar Medal is awarded by the King to individuals with exceptional service and achievements in the field of polar research. They join an illustrious line-up of recipients including members of Scott of the Antartic’s first expedition, Sir Ernest Shackleton and Sir Edmund Hillary.
Eight people were awarded the medal this year - three from the North East:
Professors Colm O'Cofaigh and Dave Roberts, who first met as postgrad students in 1992 and ended up working at Durham University in the early 2000s, and Professor John Woodward, who has established Northumbria as a world-leading university for cryospheric research in the polar regions.
Business bites
Nissan’s bosses in Japan have injected £900m into the Sunderland plant after the UK arm posted a £850m operating loss in its latest accounts. Despite the financial hit, Sunderland remains central to Nissan’s global EV strategy. Lee Hartley, founder of wealth management firm Fairstone, has stepped down from the board to concentrate on launching Castrius Capital Partners, a new private capital platform focusing on the North East. Sarat Pediredla has stepped down as CEO of hedgehog lab, the company he founded in 2007, to “slow down” and give more time to his family. He is open to advisory and non exec roles though. An unnamed major employer in Darlington is planning to grow and relocate to an expanded Stephenson House at Morton Palms Business Park. Hartlepool MP Jonathan Brash is supporting a proposal submitted to the government to designate Hartlepool's Queens Meadow Business Park and Burtree Garden Village in Darlington as part of a new AI Growth Zone. Personal injury and employment rights law firm Thompsons Solicitors is relocating its 80 Newcastle staff to the ninth floor of the refurbished Wellbar on Gallowgate from Maybrook House on Grainger Street. Lane 7, founded in Newcastle 13 years ago, is to bring all brands in the group into one administrative structure as it gears up for growth. Work on three boutique bowling and entertainment venues in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Leeds will begin this quarter. Prima Cheese plans to invest millions in its County Durham site and increase staff numbers by 10-15% after reporting an increase in turnover and profits.
2024 ad break
If you like Brian Cox you’ll love this. It’s an award-winning ad that you probably haven’t seen before as it was made for the US market. Cox plays a mature gentleman who enrols as a college freshman purely to get the student discounts available on Uber One.
The humour is dry and deadpan, and leans a fair bit on his character in Succession. It won a Creative Arts Emmy Award for outstanding commercial.
THE WIDER VIEW
Ups and downs of fat jabbers
An astonishing 12.4% of American adults are taking a weight-loss drug, I learn from The Knowledge. Spending on snacks and tobacco is down, and up on fresh fruit, veg and non-alcoholic drinks. Sales of smaller-sized clothes are up, as are sales of formal wear and sporting goods. Gym memberships are also up.
“All this may be making fat jabbers feel sexier: sales of pregnancy tests among this cohort are up by a massive 148%.”
Age test for the brain
How well is your brain ageing? I couldn’t help but try these tests in The Telegraph this week.
You can test your ability to retain information in Sequence Repeat; check how well you can focus in Shape Match; inspect your working memory in reverse Digit Recall; and find out just how good you are at multi-tasking in Trail Maker.
How to persuade over-65s to stay in work
Tax breaks, flexible working opportunities and game-changing government policies are the reasons behind a new trend that’s driving Denmark’s economy forward: the rise of the senior worker.
With private pension savings sitting at around double the country’s GDP, believed to be the highest proportion in the world, the government decided radical intervention was required to persuade people to delay their retirement. And it’s working, as senior money writer Rob White reports.
Noel Edmonds! Really?
What is it with The Telegraph and the National Trust, I asked in Sunday’s edition (Mayors, mistakes and mistrust). This week, what is it with The Telegraph and renewable energy?
“Scotland’s biggest offshore wind farm wasted three quarters of the energy it produced last year after being paid to switch off its turbines,” their article began.
Other damning quotes and statements include: “The Seagreen wind farm off Scotland’s east coast is squandering vast amounts of its power…”
“Claire Coutinho, the shadow energy secretary, blamed Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, for overseeing a system that is becoming unaffordable.”
“Richard Tice, the Reform UK energy spokesman, said: ‘Wind farms are so inefficient and unreliable that some are being paid hundreds of millions per year in constraint subsidies; less than 25% of output is going to the grid’.”
So far so bad. But, just like last week’s article on the National Trust, it’s only when you read the whole story that the accurate picture emerges.
The National Trust volunteer had pointed out spelling mistakes but he was actually blacklisted for a campaign of email harassment and had admitted to The Telegraph that his comments were inappropriate. But it was the headline news that was picked up by some other media outlets - not the truth of the matter.
As for this week’s wind farm story, the problem is that the National Grid doesn’t have the capacity to cope with the amount of clean electricity generated by wind farms - not because they are “inefficient and unreliable”.
The bottleneck in the grid system means wind farms are told to stop producing energy, and operators are paid constraint subsidies as compensation. Two ways to improve the affordability is to change the compensation system and, more importantly, upgrade the grid.
That information is contained in the article but, again, it is not the headline news.
Another thing that the two Telegraph articles have in common is who they go to for quotes and information.
The wind farm story mentions the Renewable Energy Foundation. Despite its name, the REF was founded in 2004 to fight against what it described as the “grotesque political push” for wind energy in the UK, with TV presenter Noel Edmonds of Crinkley Bottom fame, originally serving as its chairman.
He said at the time that he joined the group because of the threat of wind farm developments near his home in Devon.
The Telegraph’s National Trust story widely quoted an organisation called Restore Trust. Despite its name, it is a conservative pressure group challenging the National Trust’s approach to history, rewilding, and inclusion.
Reader Judith Martin had a bit to say about it in the Comments section. More of you should take up the option to comment on what you read in Eyes & Ears.
Yes. Great. Thank you for the prompt reply!
The link to the article by Rob White on older workers isn't working for me. Could you re-send? Thanks. Barbara