Stockton-on-Tees Regeneration & Investment Briefing

Funding, places and delivery. A briefing for the organisations bringing forward homes and regeneration across Stockton, Thornaby, Billingham, Yarm and the wider borough.

Dates and decisions to watch

Figures in this briefing cover different programmes, geographies and periods. They should not be added into a single borough investment total.

The funding landscape

Up to £46 billion over ten years

Homes England and its subsidiary, the National Housing Bank, have up to £46 billion to deploy across England to 2036. These are the principal streams. [1]

The joint Investment Prospectus, published on 31 March 2026 ahead of the Bank's opening on 1 April, brings grant, land and finance into one framework. The Bank aims to attract more than £50 billion of additional private capital over the decade.

*The prospectus describes the agency's share as £3.1bn, subject to final confirmation. These are programme envelopes, not a ring-fenced allocation to Stockton-on-Tees.

Programme milestones

Grant, land and finance (products and routes)

Which support fits a scheme depends less on its size than on what is holding it up: a funding gap, a difficult site, or the tenure of the homes to be delivered. [1]

No devolved route in the Tees Valley. Unlike Greater Manchester or West Yorkshire, Tees Valley has no integrated settlement, so housing and infrastructure grant is not routed through a devolved housing fund at scale: it arrives as TVCA's own ring-fenced Brownfield Housing Fund, administered on MHCLG's behalf, plus TVCA's Investment Plan. Social and Affordable Homes Programme grant remains administered entirely by Homes England. [3,5,9]

Regional routes: Tees Valley

Regional routes: see regions/tees-valley.md for the Combined Authority's structure, the Brownfield Housing Fund, the three Mayoral Development Corporations, the Tees Valley Investment Zone, the SAHP first-wave position (no regional estimate) and the regional skills offer.

Tees Valley is not an established mayoral strategic authority and has no integrated settlement, unlike Greater Manchester, West Midlands, Liverpool City Region, West Yorkshire, North East and South Yorkshire. [5,9 in regions/tees-valley.md] For a Stockton-on-Tees scheme, the national SAHP route comes first for affordable homes grant; TVCA's Brownfield Housing Fund is the chief local route for land and remediation.

Stockton-on-Tees sits outside all three Tees Valley Mayoral Development Corporations (South Tees, Middlesbrough, Hartlepool); the borough council remains the local planning authority for the whole of Stockton-on-Tees. [see regions/tees-valley.md]

Who decides what (decisions and public contacts)

1. Homes England / National Housing Bank — Final SAHP funding and contractual decisions. [1,19]
2. Tees Valley Combined Authority — Brownfield Housing Fund; Investment Plan and Cabinet-agreed programmes; the three Mayoral Development Corporations (none covers Stockton-on-Tees). [3,see regions/tees-valley.md]
3. Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council — Local housing need, planning authority for the whole borough, council land and its own housing programme; accountable body for Pride in Place in Central Stockton and Portrack. [4,5]
4. Pride in Place Neighbourhood Board, Central Stockton and Portrack — Independent Chair Michael Poole JP DL; Vice Chair Reverend Mark Miller. [5]
5. Registered Providers named in the first-wave SAHP table with a Teesside base — Thirteen Housing Group Limited (Middlesbrough-headquartered, and the largest social landlord in Stockton-on-Tees) and Karbon Homes Limited (North East-wide). Neither publishes a live Stockton-on-Tees new-build site: Thirteen's homes-in-development listing names three sites, none in this borough, checked 19 September 2026. Both remain the realistic delivery-partner route into SAHP grant here. [2,28]

Public routes for the next conversation

A useful first enquiry names the site, landowner, proposed use, delivery lead, funding gap and next decision.

Accessing programme grant: a route for smaller providers

• Continuous Market Engagement — Open for individual schemes and portfolios while funding remains available. Designed to accommodate smaller partners, new entrants and complex projects. [20]
• Strategic partnerships — Programme-level allocations. The initial bidding round closed on 15 April 2026; future rounds will be announced. [19]

Before a grant application

Organisations need Homes England Investment Partner qualification to receive grant. Because Tees Valley is not an established mayoral strategic authority area, there is no mayor-set tenure floor for a Stockton-on-Tees scheme; SAHP strategic priorities are Homes England's national ones, applied through its North East and Yorkshire operating area. [see regions/tees-valley.md]

A widely circulated May 2025 consultancy analysis of the revised standard method gives Stockton-on-Tees an indicative annual local housing need of 767 homes — this is not verified against a current MHCLG table or the borough's own adopted or emerging Local Plan, and the standard method was revised again in 2026. [see regions/tees-valley.md, source 25]

Places and programmes (borough programmes)

Stockton Waterfront — town-centre regeneration, continuing

The Council's own November 2025 Stockton-on-Tees Plan progress report names "Stockton Waterfront development" as a completed highlight of the plan's first year and "Stockton Waterfront development to continue" as future/planned activity; no homes number, funding package or phasing is given in the report itself — open, further detail not retrieved for this brief. [12]

West Stockton Strategic Urban Expansion — 2,150 homes (2018 framing)

TVCA's 1 February 2018 announcement of the £12.8m Housing Infrastructure Fund "Housing Growth Corridor" award names West Stockton Strategic Urban Expansion at 2,150 homes as one of two anchor sites (with West Park, Darlington, 1,200 homes) within a wider corridor concept of c.£250m and 20,570 homes across six sites in Stockton and Darlington. This is 2018-era framing, carried into the Tees Valley regional page with the same caveat: it should be checked against current delivery before being quoted as a live programme, and its homes figure is not verified against a current planning or housing-supply position. [24,see regions/tees-valley.md]

Other named regeneration areas — not verified for this brief

Search-engine-aggregated summaries of the Council's own housing-strategy pages name Hardwick, Mandale, West End Gardens, Norton Park and the Victoria Estate as housing-led regeneration areas (completed, ongoing or proposed respectively), alongside a "Regenerated River Tees Corridor" ambition and the Wynyard Sustainable Settlement as components of the Local Plan's housing supply. None of these was independently confirmed against a directly retrieved council page for this brief — the relevant housing-strategy pages returned HTTP 403/404 to both direct fetch and the ScrapingBee fallback within the time available. Homes numbers, phasing and delivery partners for each are open items. [see Research notes]

Not reconciled with the above

Any homes figures named above are scheme- or corridor-level and should not be summed with the borough's Local Plan housing requirement, which already contains this and all other future supply. [13]

Pride in Place: Central Stockton and Portrack

Stockton-on-Tees has one Pride in Place neighbourhood — Central Stockton and Portrack — carrying £19.6 million over ten years, confirmed in the Council's own words on its Pride in Place page. [4]

Central Stockton and Portrack does not appear in the phase 1 list (75 towns, 2023) or in the 20 March 2026 phase 2 expansion note (40 neighbourhoods plus Wales): it was selected in the phase 2 cohort only, so no second Stockton-on-Tees neighbourhood is expected from either of the other two lists. [6,14,17]

Pride in Place Impact Fund — absent, a finding

The Impact Fund pays £750,000 in each of 2025/26 and 2026/27 to the authorities listed in Annex A of the two MHCLG determinations. Stockton-on-Tees does not appear in Annex A of either determination. Both annexes were parsed directly from the GOV.UK pages on 19 September 2026: each lists 94 authorities, from Ashfield to Wrexham, and the only Tees Valley entries are Hartlepool and Middlesbrough, both at £750,000. Stockton-on-Tees, Redcar and Cleveland and Darlington are all absent. This is an absence, not a gap in this brief, and should be raised with the council or MHCLG if a local allocation is expected. [9,10,29]

Bring a project that can be delivered

• Need, ownership and consent — Who benefits, land control, delivery lead, consents and dependencies.
• Capital and continuing costs — Works, contingency, asset owner, operating budget and maintenance.

National delivery guidance requires each board to have at least eight members, with at least 51% living or working locally. [7,8]

Local investment and project calls: different pots, different decisions

Do not add these figures together. They are different programmes, geographies and periods.

Homes, partners and local need

The Local Plan number

Stockton-on-Tees' adopted Local Plan (30 January 2019) sets an average annual housing requirement of 677 dwellings a year (10,150 homes over 15 years); a more recent operational figure of 655 dwellings a year is used in the Council's housing-supply assessments for 2025/26–2029/30. Both figures come from a search-engine-aggregated summary of the Council's Five Year Land Supply Assessment and were not independently confirmed by a direct retrieval of the underlying PDF for this brief, which returned an HTML challenge page rather than document text — not verified. [13]

A widely circulated May 2025 consultancy analysis of the revised standard method gives Stockton-on-Tees an indicative annual local housing need of 767 homes a year — a later, higher figure calculated under revised national guidance; the two numbers are not directly comparable and should not be netted against each other to imply a shortfall. [see regions/tees-valley.md, source 25]

Housing Strategy in transition

The Council's own November 2025 Stockton-on-Tees Plan progress report lists "Housing Strategy to be finalised" among future/planned activity, meaning no current, adopted borough Housing Strategy for the plan period was confirmed as in force at the time of writing. The same report names "Homelessness Strategy published" as a completed activity in the plan's first year, with no further detail retrieved for this brief. [12]

Named local delivery

These are examples of local or regional activity, not a complete provider list or evidence of a new SAHP award for Stockton-on-Tees. Neither Thirteen's £349.2m nor Karbon's £350.0m should be read as money committed to this borough: the first-wave partner table is a national envelope with no site or borough breakdown. [2]

Housing register and homelessness

No current Stockton-on-Tees housing register total, band breakdown or homelessness presentation figures were found in the sources checked for this brief — open. The Council's own progress report confirms a Homelessness Strategy was published in the plan's first year (2024/25) but does not itemise current figures. [12]

Delivery and the supply chain

Finding the actual route to work

Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council confirms directly on its own "Doing business with the Council" page that it uses Open, the North East Procurement Organisation's (NEPO) e-procurement system, "to advertise contracts and invite or receive tenders" — matching the regional page's statement that all five Tees Valley councils are NEPO members. Registration is free via the NEPO website. For contracts above £179,000 (goods and services), £4.4m (works) or £633,000 (certain health and social care contracts), suppliers must also register on the government's Central Digital Platform under the Procurement Act 2023 regime. Contracts between £15,000 and £179,087 require at least four written quotes; above £179,087, a competitive tendering process applies where there is no in-house provider or corporate contract. Procurement enquiries: CorporateProcurement@stockton.gov.uk. [11,18 in regions/tees-valley.md]

Above-threshold notices also appear on Find a Tender (find-tender.service.gov.uk), the national register under the Procurement Act 2023 regime. [21 in regions/tees-valley.md]

A funding announcement does not itself create an open invitation to tender: where a strategic regeneration partner or Registered Provider is already engaged on a site, supply-chain work there flows through that partner relationship rather than a fresh council tender.

Skills and delivery capacity

There is no Construction Technical Excellence College in the Tees Valley. The nearest is City of Sunderland College, one of the ten CTECs named on 12 August 2025 under the £100m national construction skills drive (£80m capital, £20m revenue, target of 40,000 trained by 2029), roughly 30–40 miles north of Stockton-on-Tees. Leeds College of Building is the second-nearest, to the south. [15,16 in regions/tees-valley.md]

Stockton Riverside College is part of the Education Training Collective (Etc.) — the Teesside group also comprising Redcar and Cleveland College, Bede Sixth Form College, NETA Training and Innersummit — named one of five Clean Energy Technical Excellence Colleges on 14 April 2026, backed by £175m nationally across 19 second-wave colleges. This is a clean-energy designation, not a construction one; capital investment supports specialist employer-aligned facilities. [16 in regions/tees-valley.md]

For a construction workforce or social-value commitment in Stockton-on-Tees, the practical combination is Stockton Riverside College (Etc.) and NETA Training for trades and clean-energy skills locally, and City of Sunderland College where formal CTEC status is required by a funder. No Stockton-on-Tees-specific construction course catalogue (entry levels, placements, contact details) was independently retrieved for this brief — open. [see regions/tees-valley.md]

Sources

Research checked on 19 September 2026.

1. Homes England / National Housing Bank, Investment Prospectus 2026 · source
2. Homes England / MHCLG, "Homes England and government confirm strategic partners...", 25 August 2026 · source
3. Tees Valley Combined Authority, Brownfield Housing Fund · source
4. Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council, Pride in Place (overview) · source
5. Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council, "New Independent Chair appointed to lead Pride in Place Board for Central Stockton and Portrack", 5 June 2026 · source
6. MHCLG, Pride in Place Programme phase 2: place selection methodology note (confirms "Stockton-on-Tees | 1 | Central Stockton & Portrack") · source
7. MHCLG, Pride in Place programme delivery guidance · source
8. MHCLG, Pride in Place programme prospectus · source
9. MHCLG, Pride in Place Impact Fund grant determinations 2025–26 · source
10. MHCLG, Pride in Place Impact Fund grant determinations 2026–27 · source
11. Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council, Doing business with the Council · source
12. Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council, "Stockton-on-Tees Plan – Progress 2025", report to Executive Scrutiny Committee, 18 November 2025 · source
13. Search-engine-aggregated summary of Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council's Five Year Land Supply Assessment 2025–2030 and Local Plan adoption date (30 January 2019); direct retrieval of the underlying PDF was blocked for this brief — not verified · source
14. MHCLG, Pride in Place Programme phase 1: place selection methodology note (no Stockton-on-Tees entry) · source
15. MHCLG, Pride in Place Programme phase 2 expansion: place selection methodology note, published 20 March 2026 (no Stockton-on-Tees entry) · source
16. Homes England, SAHP 2026 to 2036 guidance · source
17. Homes England, SAHP 2026 to 2036: bid for funding using the CME route · source
18. Homes England, SAHP 2026 to 2036: bid for funding as a strategic partnership · source
19. Tees Valley Combined Authority, Housing Growth Corridor / Housing Infrastructure Fund award, 1 February 2018 · source
20. MHCLG, "Historic council housebuilding comeback to help families into secure homes", 24 August 2026 — regional funding breakdown covering only the six established mayoral strategic authorities; Tees Valley not covered · source
21. Thirteen Group, Homes in development (England-wide listing; borough-specific URLs resolve to the same page) · source
22. MHCLG, Pride in Place Impact Fund grant determinations, Annex A tables parsed in full, 19 September 2026 — 94 authorities per determination; Tees Valley entries are Hartlepool £750,000 and Middlesbrough £750,000 only · source and source

For the regional routes ("in regions/tees-valley.md" and "see regions/tees-valley.md"), see the full numbered source list in that page's own Sources section (sources 1–27).

Research notes

Verified from primary or council sources

• Central Stockton and Portrack confirmed as Stockton-on-Tees' only Pride in Place neighbourhood, phase 2, checked directly against MHCLG's phase 2 methodology note; absence from the phase 1 list and the 20 March 2026 phase 2 expansion note also checked directly against both primary GOV.UK documents. [6,14,17]
• £19.6m over ten years, the September 2025 selection date, and the programme's four theme areas read directly from the Council's own Pride in Place page. [4]
• Independent Chair (Michael Poole JP DL) and Vice Chair (Reverend Mark Miller), their biographies, the 5 June 2026 announcement date, and the two June drop-in session dates and venues read directly from the Council's own news article. [5]
• Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council confirmed as a NEPO member using the "Open" e-procurement platform, directly from the Council's own "Doing business with the Council" page, including the Central Digital Platform thresholds and the quotation/tender value bands. [11]
• "Stockton Waterfront development" and "Housing Strategy to be finalised" / "Homelessness Strategy published" read directly from the Council's own November 2025 Stockton-on-Tees Plan progress report to Executive Scrutiny Committee. [12]
• The absence of a Tees Valley regional SAHP estimate, and Tees Valley's exclusion from MHCLG's 24 August 2026 regional funding breakdown, checked against both primary GOV.UK releases (consistent with the regional page's own verification). [2,27]

Not verified / press or search-aggregated

• The Local Plan's 677/655 dwellings-a-year figures and its 30 January 2019 adoption date rest on a search-engine-aggregated summary of the Council's Five Year Land Supply Assessment; direct retrieval of the underlying PDF returned an HTML challenge page rather than document text within the time available for this brief.
• Hardwick, Mandale, West End Gardens, Norton Park, Victoria Estate, the "Regenerated River Tees Corridor" and Wynyard Sustainable Settlement are named only in a search-engine-aggregated summary of the Council's housing-strategy pages; none of the underlying pages could be directly retrieved (HTTP 403/404 to both WebFetch and ScrapingBee) within the time available.
• West Stockton Strategic Urban Expansion's 2,150-homes figure rests on 2018 Housing Growth Corridor framing carried over from the regional page; current delivery status not checked for this brief.

Open items

• ~~Stockton-on-Tees' own Pride in Place Impact Fund line in Annex A of both determinations could not be confirmed~~ — closed by the verifier pass below on 19 September 2026: the determination pages were fetched raw and their Annex A tables parsed from the HTML directly; Stockton-on-Tees is absent from both. The research pass's difficulty was real: WebFetch, ScrapingBee and the GOV.UK content API all returned the page without a usable authority table. Fetching the page HTML with curl and parsing the <tr> rows works; use that method for these two pages in future.
• Whether Thirteen Housing Group or Karbon Homes is active on a named Stockton-on-Tees scheme was not established.
• The largest live housing schemes in the borough beyond West Stockton (with homes numbers, phase and delivery partner) were not confirmed; the Council's own housing-supply monitoring reports were not retrieved.
• Current housing register total, band breakdown and homelessness presentation figures for Stockton-on-Tees.
• Whether a Housing Strategy for the current plan period has since been adopted.
• Local Towns Fund / Levelling Up Fund awards for Stockton-on-Tees or Thornaby: searched but not confirmed against a primary MHCLG/DLUHC award notice within the time available — treat as open rather than absent.
• A Stockton-on-Tees-specific TVCA Brownfield Housing Fund scheme (equivalent to Wakefield's Wood Street Collection) was not identified.

Blocked or failed URLs

• https://www.stockton.gov.uk/article/20360/Pride-in-Place — HTTP 403 to direct WebFetch; retrieved via ScrapingBee (JS render) instead.
• https://www.stockton.gov.uk/article/21257/New-Independent-Chair-appointed-to-lead-Pride-in-Place-Board-for-Central-Stockton-and-Portrack — HTTP 403 to direct WebFetch; retrieved via ScrapingBee (JS render) instead.
• https://www.stockton.gov.uk/doing-business-with-the-council — HTTP 403 to direct WebFetch; retrieved via ScrapingBee (JS render) instead.
• https://www.stockton.gov.uk/article/5695/Delivering-the-housing-strategy — HTTP 404 to both direct WebFetch and ScrapingBee.
• https://www.stockton.gov.uk/housing-strategy-growth-choice — HTTP 404 to both direct WebFetch and ScrapingBee.
• https://www.stockton.gov.uk/stockton-town-deal — HTTP 404 to both direct WebFetch and ScrapingBee.
• https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/pride-in-place-impact-fund/pride-in-place-impact-fund-grant-determinations-2025-to-2026 and .../2026-to-2027 — returned 200 but with truncated body content (no Annex A authority table) to both WebFetch, ScrapingBee and a direct GOV.UK content-API call.
• https://www.stockton.gov.uk/media/7743/Five-Year-Land-Supply-Assessment-2025-2030-ACCESSIBLE/pdf/... — returned an HTML challenge page rather than PDF content to direct curl.

Verifier pass, 19 September 2026:

• Corrected (material): the Pride in Place Impact Fund line is now resolved as an absence. The brief previously marked Stockton-on-Tees' Annex A entry "not confirmed" in three places. Both determination pages were fetched raw with curl and their Annex A tables parsed from the HTML directly (a plain WebFetch or search summary of these pages is unreliable — that is what defeated the research pass). Each determination lists 94 authorities, 93 at £750,000 and Bridgend at £1,500,000. Stockton-on-Tees appears in neither year. The only Tees Valley entries are Hartlepool and Middlesbrough. [29]
• Confirmed: Central Stockton & Portrack is in the phase 2 cohort, read from the phase 2 methodology note's own table ("Stockton-on-Tees | 1 | Central Stockton & Portrack"); the 30 November 2026 plan deadline is correct, taken from the prospectus and delivery guidance; Stockton appears in neither the phase 1 list (75 towns, Parts A and B) nor the 20 March 2026 phase 2 expansion list (40 boards plus Wales), so the 26 February 2027 deadline does not apply here.
• Open item closed: whether Thirteen or Karbon is active on a named Stockton-on-Tees scheme. Thirteen's homes-in-development listing was checked directly; every borough-specific URL resolves to one England-wide page naming three sites (Hillside Gardens Middlesbrough 296, Amberley and Harrogate Sunderland 96, Westgate Cleckheaton 180). No live Stockton new-build site is listed. Both brief sections now say so rather than leaving it open. [28]
• Confirmed unchanged: the SAHP first-wave table figures (33 partners, £9,584.1m, 73,617 homes; Thirteen 2,750/£349.2m; Karbon 2,533/£350.0m), read from the release's own table; the absence of any Tees Valley regional estimate in MHCLG's 24 August 2026 release, correctly sourced to MHCLG [27] and not marked "not verified"; NEPO/Open as the council's procurement route, stated from the council's own page.
• Still open, with what was searched: the council's own housing-strategy regeneration areas (Hardwick, Mandale, West End Gardens, Norton Park, Victoria Estate) — stockton.gov.uk housing-strategy pages still return 403/challenge pages to curl and ScrapingBee; the Housing Strategy's adoption status beyond the November 2025 progress report; the current delivery status of West Stockton Strategic Urban Expansion (2,150 homes), where only the 2018 Housing Growth Corridor framing is published; the housing register total and homelessness presentations; any Stockton-specific UKSPF successor allocation for 2026/27; any Stockton-named TVCA Brownfield Housing Fund scheme.

General information only, not legal, financial or professional advice. Confirm eligibility and terms with the relevant body.