The Teesworks Deal: Who Gets the Gold and Who Takes the Risk?

An article in the latest Private Eye about the grand scheme to rebuild the old steelworks on the Tees set me thinking of Eston Nab, where I used to run at lunchtimes while working at ICI Wilton. The steelworks was also one of my sites back then, so its rise, fall and resurrection have always held a certain grim fascination for me, though the machinations behind it all make my head spin¹Brooks, Richard. STRIPPED TEES: How Britain’s flagship levelling up project turned into a scandalous giveaway. Private Eye No. 1660 17 Oct-30 Oct 2025..

Two decades on, Eston Nab is barely recognisable. The semi-open open moor of my memory is now smothered in woodland, scarred here and there by the charred remains of last summer’s fires. The usual collection of burnt-out cars adds a familiar touch of realism.

As for the steelworks project itself—visible at the centre of the photograph, in the distance, this side of the Tees estuary—it was trumpeted as a billion-pound triumph in waiting, a renaissance of industry and jobs for Teesside. Yet, as ever, the devil has been given free rein in the detail. The project was structured as a partnership between the South Tees Development Corporation (supposedly the guardian of public interest) and two private businessmen. Unsurprisingly, the arrangement appears to tilt steeply towards the latter.

For a start, the land—vast, valuable and publicly owned—was handed to the joint venture for nothing. Not a token sum, not a peppercorn rent, simply nothing. Meanwhile, almost every pound spent cleaning and redeveloping the site has come from the public purse. Investigators could find no convincing trace of private capital. So the taxpayer shoulders all the risk, while the private partners wait to collect the spoils if things go well.

It gets worse. Twenty million pounds in government grants meant to help the community somehow ended up being loaned to private companies instead. Then, in 2022, those same private partners withdrew £87.7 million for tax purposes before a single penny of profit reached the public side. The STDC, which was promised its share of returns, went four years without seeing a farthing, and even when £38.4 million in profit was projected for 2024, the private partners made sure their own dividends were fattened first.

Then there is the so-called “Wire Transfer” deal—an arrangement involving land and energy rights for data centres—that could yield £650 million in profit for the private side. To add insult to injury, they acquired energy network assets worth over £10 to the taxpayer for a token £1, and under a 50-year lease will eventually take 45 per cent of profits outright. Piddling amounts but highlighting the unfairness in nominal asset transfer.

All this has been wrapped in secrecy, with the public kept in the dark about key details of how their money is being used. The result is depressingly predictable: private gain built on public risk, dressed up as regional regeneration. Teesside may one day glitter again, but it seems the shine will belong to a select few, while everyone else foots the bill.

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  Brooks, Richard. STRIPPED TEES: How Britain’s flagship levelling up project turned into a scandalous giveaway. Private Eye No. 1660 17 Oct-30 Oct 2025.