Stripped Tees

A Private Eye Special Report By Richard Brooks How Britain’s flagship ‘levelling up’ project turned into a scandalous giveaway
IT WAS to be the UK’s largest regeneration scheme in decades, a model for regional devolution and the flagship post-Brexit freeport. But the redevelopment of the former steelworks on the south bank of the RiverTees became little more than an unlawful, taxpayer-funded scheme to promote the political career of aTory golden boy and vastly enrich a couple of local businessmen and their families, all hidden in a web of deception. In the process, it is financially imperilling a major regional development body and squandering the chance to revive one of the country’s most deprived but industrially promising areas. This is how it happened...

SPECIAL REPORTS