Tees Valley Combined Authority

The Tees Valley Combined Authority (TVCA) is the combined authority for the Tees Valley urban area in North East England consisting of the following five unitary authorities: Darlington, Hartlepool, Middlesbrough, Redcar and Cleveland, and Stockton-on-Tees, covering a population of approximately 700,000 people. The area is divided between the ceremonial counties of North Yorkshire and County Durham. It was proposed that a combined authority be established by statutory instrument under the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009.^[2] It is a strategic authority with powers over transport, economic development and regeneration including the flagship Teesside Freeport.

Tees Valley Combined Authority
The Tees Valley highlighted within North East England
Type
Type	Combined authority of Tees Valley
Houses	Unicameral
Term limits	None
History
Founded	1 April 2016
Leadership
Mayor	Ben Houchen, Conservative since 8 May 2017
Chief Executive	Julie Gilhespie since November 2018[1]
Structure
Seats	5 constituent members and chair
Political groups	Labour (5)   Conservative (1)   Non-political (1)
Elections
Voting system	Directly elected mayor since 2017
Last election	2 May 2024
Next election	4 May 2028
Meeting place
Teesside Airport Business Suite, Teesside International Airport, Darlington, DL2 1NJ
Website
teesvalley-ca.gov.uk

The Combined Authority was established on 1 April 2016, after Local Government Minister James Wharton MP signed the necessary Order.^[3] It was announced in October 2015 that voters in the region covered by the Authority would directly elect a Mayor in 2017.^[4][5]

History

The abolition of the non-metropolitan county of Cleveland in 1996 left the Tees Valley without a single authority covering the whole area, although some council functions continued to be provided jointly through Cleveland Police and the Cleveland Fire Brigade.

A combined authority was proposed in 2014 and sixty-five per cent of more than 1,900 responses received during a seven-week long public consultation were in favour of a combined authority.^[6]

A shadow combined authority was formed and chaired by Sue Jeffrey, Leader of Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council.^[7]

Membership

The authority consists of the five local authorities of Tees Valley as constituent members, the directly elected Mayor of Tees Valley as the chair, and the Chairman of the Tees Valley local enterprise partnership as an associate member.^[8] The mayor is a member of the Mayoral Council for England and the Council of the Nations and Regions.

As of June 2025, the composition of the combined authority was:^[9]

Name		Membership	Nominating authority	Position within nominating authority
	Ben Houchen	Chair	Tees Valley Combined Authority	Tees Valley Mayor
	Steve Harker	Constituent	Darlington Borough Council	Leader of the Council
	Brenda Harrison	Constituent	Hartlepool Borough Council	Leader of the Council
	Chris Cooke	Constituent	Middlesbrough Borough Council	Mayor of Middlesbrough
	Alec Brown	Constituent	Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council	Leader of the Council
	Lisa Evans	Constituent	Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council	Leader of the Council
	Siobhan McArdle	Non-constituent	Tees Valley Local Enterprise Partnership	Chairman of the LEP

Demographics

Main article: Demographics of Tees Valley

Population

Population of Tees Valley by district (2022)^[10]

District	Land area		Population		Density (/km2)
	(km2)	(%)	People	(%)
Darlington	197	25%	109,469	16%	554
Hartlepool	94	12%	93,861	14%	1,002
Middlesbrough	54	7%	148,285	22%	2,752
Redcar and Cleveland	245	31%	137,175	20%	560
Stockton-on-Tees	205	26%	199,966	29%	976
Tees Valley	795	100%	688,756	100%	866

Religion

2021 Religious Data^[11]

Religion	Tees Valley CA (Approximate)		England %
	Capita	%
No religion	264,108	39.0	36.7
Christian	343,340	50.7	46.3
Buddhist	2,032	0.3	0.5
Hindu	3,386	0.5	1.8
Jewish	–	0.0[note 1]	0.5
Muslim	25,734	3.8	6.7
Sikh	2,032	0.3	0.9
Other religion	2,032	0.3	0.6
Not answered	35,214	5.2	6.0

Ethnicity and Identity

2021 Ethnicity of Tees Valley^[11]

Category	Tees Valley CA	England
Asian, Asian British or Asian Welsh	4.4%	9.6%
Black, Black British, Black Welsh, Caribbean or African	1.1%	4.2%
Mixed or Multiple ethnic groups	1.3%	3%
White	92.1%	81%
Other ethnic group	1.1%	2.2%

See also

• Cleveland (county)
• Teesside
• Tees Valley
• Tees Valley Mayor

Notes

1. The percentage may not equal 0% in the census, but rather the value is too small to represent in the provided accuracy. It may also not be publicly released for data protection reasons if the sample is too small.