Why Won't Middlesbrough Council Remove The Linthorpe Road Cycle Lane?

Plus: Where Teesside's MPs stand on the two-child benefit cap

Thank you for the incredible support after The Teesside Lead’s relaunch this week! There are already hundreds of you signed up, and it’s so exciting to see such a positive response to a brand new independent news source for the area.

This edition will be getting to the core of what’s really behind the war of words between two mayors and a hated cycle lane. Whenever there’s some sort of political spat, the tendency for local press is to just repeat what each side says, as it’s difficult to provide nuance and context in the medium of newspaper copy. The whole point of The Teesside Lead is to try to provide that extra insight and context to help explain why this may have kicked off this week.

The second half of the newsletter looks into child poverty in the region and the two-child benefit cap, with some of the region’s MPs exclusively explaining their positions to The Teesside Lead.

Don’t forget to share The Teesside Lead with people you know - it’s the most effective way to help grow our audience, which in turn helps us to deliver the best possible news service for the people of Teesside.

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Middlesbrough Mayor Chris Cooke and Tees Valley Mayor Ben Houchen at the contentious cycle lane in Middlesbrough (Image: TVCA)

By July this year it seemed like the direction of travel on Linthorpe Road was clear. Both Tory mayor Ben Houchen and Labour mayor Chris Cooke were in rare agreement - the Middlesbrough cycle lane had to be removed only two years after it was installed at a cost of £1.7m.

Cooke was elected in 2023 with a pledge to remove it, while Houchen made the same promise in his 2024 re-election campaign.

Lord Houchen’s Tees Valley Combined Authority had launched a public consultation and a timeline for its removal, with work expected to begin before the end of this year.

This seemingly trivial issue became the area’s biggest political story this week when Lord Houchen made the claim that he’d been sent an email from Middlesbrough Council saying officers would recommend the cycle lane remained.

The war of words, or as someone in a local newsroom described it to me - whiny baby politics - is the latest in the sort of he-said-she-said political stories that are typical of Teesside.

What’s really going on?

TVCA have said they would pay for the scheme. Lord Houchen even shared a letter on his social media from his chief executive Julie Gilhespie to Chris Cooke confirming their intention to pay for it.

The problem, as has so often been the case with TVCA, is due process.

As the local highway authority, legal responsibility for any roadworks lies with Middlesbrough Council. While TVCA can bankroll the work, it has to be undertaken by Middlesbrough.

A council source told me they cannot approve that work until the money for the scheme reaches them from TVCA. The cycle lane’s removal is expected to cost around £3m, and commencing the work without that cash would add an unacceptable liability to the council’s balance sheet.

Lord Houchen relies on Gilhespie’s letter as proof of TVCA paying for the scheme, but such a letter is not legally binding, and the language she uses relies on assumptions, and offers no timeframes:

At the appropriate point in time, assuming the business case is approved, we will issue a funding agreement.

Middlesbrough Council has only just been taken out of special measures, but it continues to need £14m of spending cuts to balance its books. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that it’s hesitant to undertake this work, at great expense, without cast-iron legal assurances that it won’t have to pay.

Lord Houchen’s intervention also came in a timely manner. The next day it was reported in The Guardian that metro mayors were concerned their transport funding would be cut in this week’s budget.

The second round of funding from the City Region Sustainable Transport Settlements pot (CRSTS2), agreed by the previous Conservative government, provides transport money for metro mayors from 2027/28 to 2031/32. Tees Valley’s allocation is £978m. It’s the “billion pounds” Lord Houchen had pledged to spend in January on things including £250m on the Darlington Link Road, £20m on “autonomous trams”, and £1m on a feasibility study for an Eastern Tees crossing.

Could Wednesday’s budget, with Labour trying to cut spending promised by the Tory government, affect these budgets?

This week’s Budget will focus on the rest of this financial year, and the next, while an official spending review will be concluded in time for the Chancellor’s Spring Statement next year. Departmental spending limits for 2026/27 and 2027/28 will be included in that review.

The political will to remove the cycle lane is there from all parties. Regardless of council officers’ recommendations, Middlesbrough’s executive will approve the works to take place when they receive a legal guarantee for the money.

Middlesbrough Mayor Chris Cooke said in a statement: “Ben Houchen is simply making noise in the background.”

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Teesside stories you may have missed…

🚓 A police traffic stop in Hartlepool found a firearm on the driver and subsequently lead to the discovery of a cannabis farm

🐟 The Environment Agency is undertaking a £30m project to restore natural habitats on the North side of the Tees

🏢 Darlington’s Binns/House of Fraser building has apparently found a buyer

🚗 Stockton Council is introducing parking charges in Stockton and Yarm, leaving businesses fuming

🏚️ One of the region’s biggest housing associations has been criticised by a group of tenants saying their homes are “unfit for human habitation”

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Did July’s election whet your appetite for democracy, but leave you wanting more? If you’re a fan of voting slips and ballot counting, Hemlington was the place for you this week.

A by-election for a seat on Middlesbrough Council was held in the ward on Thursday following the death of long-serving Councillor Jeanette Walker in August.

Labour retained the seat (and their single seat majority on the council), with Tom Mohan winning 422 votes out of 798 (52.88%).

Tory Lewis Melvin was second with 251 votes (31.45%), which is a considerable improvement on their 2023 result in the seat when they polled third with both their candidates polling a combined 15% of the vote.

Turnout this week was only 18.19%, but as Local Democracy Reporter Daniel Hodgson notes, that was considered good for a local by-election in these circumstances.

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The Lead’s national title has just launched a campaign calling on Chancellor Rachel Reeves to cancel a tax loophole known as Entrepreneurs’ Relief, and to use the additional revenue raised by HMRC to fund the abolition of the two-child benefit cap.

You can read The Lead’s publisher, Mike Harris, making the case here, and you can sign the petition here.

Official government figures published in July show 1 in 9 children are affected by the cap, which was introduced by the Conservative Government in 2017 and prevents parents from being able to claim state support for more than two children.

Those figures also showed around 19,000 families in the North East were affected by the limit, almost 6,000 of those in the Tees Valley area.

Number of households affected by the two-child limit, April 2024
Darlington: 710
Hartlepool: 860
Middlesbrough: 1,700
Redcar and Cleveland: 1,100
Stockton-on-Tees: 1,400
Source: NECPC

The Child Poverty Action Group calculates 250,000 children would be removed from poverty if the cap were scrapped, and a further 800,000 children in the UK would live in less deep poverty.

In setting out its intentions for Parliament after being elected, the new Labour government’s King’s Speech was held only six days after those government stats were released.

Before Parliament voted on the speech, the SNP tabled an amendment which would have seen the two-child benefit cap consigned to history. However, despite the best intentions of Labour MPs, they were whipped to vote against the SNP’s amendment, effectively taking affirmative action to maintain the two-child cap.

Middlesbrough and Thornaby East MP Andy McDonald was particularly outspoken about the policy, saying before the vote, “Labour will deliver a strategy to reduce child poverty. It should include ending the two-child limit.”

In the event, McDonald was absent from the vote as he was attending his daughter’s graduation, although he re-affirmed his commitment to supporting the removal of the cap on social media the next day. He was the only local Labour MP not against the amendment which called for an end to the cap.

However, in an article previewing the budget he wrote for North East Bylines this week, McDonald has softened his language, instead now calling for “changes to the two-child benefit limit”.

Talking to The Teesside Lead he explained: "I have always opposed the two child benefit cap and I remain of the view that it requires change.

"The North East Child Poverty Commission have done excellent work on this issue and their most recent figures show that in my constituency 19% of all children are affected by the policy - that is deeply troubling.

"I welcomed the launch of the child poverty taskforce in July, and whilst I look forward to seeing the work of the taskforce unfold, we need to take action now to lift children out of poverty. For that reason  I hope we will see changes to the two-child benefit limit in the Budget, as the North East Child Poverty Commission has called for."

In only his third vote in Parliament, new Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland MP Luke Myer voted to maintain the cap.

He told The Teesside Lead this week: “The shocking level of child poverty on Teesside is one of the marks of shame of the previous government.

“I am pleased that the new government have convened a taskforce to work with the charity sector on an ambitious new Child Poverty Strategy. It must deliver, and I am clear that this should include a feasible and costed plan to scrap the cruel two-child limit.”

In her role as a whip, Redcar MP Anna Turley is unable to comment on government policy. However, between her stints in Parliament she chaired the North East Child Poverty Commission, during which time she co-authored a piece published by The Northern Echo calling for the scrapping of the cap.

Stockton North MP Chris McDonald told me “the single most important thing we can do to lift children out of poverty is to abolish the two-child limit”. Although it isn’t as straightforward as simply removing the cap, he says.

“Unfortunately, the country faces one of the worst financial situations in our history. Any action on the two-child limit needs to be taken at a time when it will be sustainable so that nobody will be left behind in the future,” he said.

Jonathan Brash did not provide a comment for this story. No response was received from Lola McEvoy, Alan Strickland, or Matt Vickers, despite repeated requests.

A debate on the cap was held at a meeting of Durham Council this week, with a Liberal Democrat motion urging councillors to back the scrapping of the cap. Labour, who are in opposition in County Durham, criticised the Lib Dems for not going far enough with their motion. “This motion is laughable,” said Cllr Angela Surtees.

After heated exchanges, an amendment put forward by Labour was carried, proposing the council writes to the government asking how it can support its Child Poverty Strategy Plan, according to Local Democracy Reporter, Bill Edgar.

On Wednesday the Government published its plan for making a plan about tackling child poverty. It says they want to listen to voices from outside of government, and to “build consensus”.

Given that consensus has already been built by poverty charities working across the UK, and that consensus is that the two-child benefit cap should be abolished, it begs the question: What is the government waiting for?

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This Wednesday’s newsletter will actually come to you on Thursday. It will be a special edition analysing the Budget and what it means for Teesside and the surrounding areas.

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Thanks for reading and enjoy the rest of your weekend.

Leigh