Episode 7: 394 homes approved at Harrowgate Lane, prison build starts near Yarm, and the ducting firm feeding NZT Power

Transcript

DARREN: Welcome to the Teesside Trade Podcast, the weekly show covering construction, trades and property across the Tees Valley. I'm Darren Turnbull.

TERRY: And I'm Terry Oakes. The week's news, a local firm worth knowing, and one practical tip.

DARREN: And we start with a result we called last week. Avant Homes North East has won approval for three hundred and ninety-four homes at Tithebarns Fields, off Harrowgate Lane in Bishopsgarth.

TERRY: Eleven votes to one, wasn't it?

DARREN: It was. Stockton's planning committee passed all three linked applications on Wednesday the ninth — reserved matters for two hundred and thirty homes across phases one to three, a hundred and ten more in phases four and five, and full permission for another fifty-four. That's a thirteen-hectare site inside the West Stockton Sustainable Urban Extension. Thirty-three objection letters came in over traffic, GP surgeries and greenfield loss, but officers recommended approval and members followed.

TERRY: The traffic point matters to our lot, though. The council's highways engineer told the committee that initial junction works around Yarm Back Lane have already started, with the main scheme due inside six months. Civils before bricks — that's the order of work on every site like this.

DARREN: And the same week, Redcar and Cleveland's committee approved eighty-seven homes for Gleeson Regeneration on farmland south of Alford Road in Brotton, on land the Local Plan sees taking up to two hundred and seventy homes by twenty thirty-two.

TERRY: Call it close to five hundred homes into the regional pipeline in one week. That's the news that pays wages.

DARREN: Second story, and a different kind of client. Construction has started on a hundred and fifty-two new prison places at HMP Kirklevington Grange, near Yarm.

TERRY: The open prison out past Kirklevington village.

DARREN: That's the one. Ground was broken on Thursday the tenth for three two-storey accommodation blocks — a hundred and eighty-one rapid deployment cell modules, delivered by modular specialist Reds10, its largest project of that kind to date. Two serving prisoners are already working on the foundations, with more to join as the build goes on.

TERRY: The context is a national programme — four point seven billion pounds for fourteen thousand prison places by twenty thirty-one. And modular doesn't mean no site work: foundations, drainage, services, roads and fencing still get built on the ground, by somebody.

DARREN: Third, a quick one for the skills pipeline. Middlesbrough College has opened a one point five million pound expansion at its TTE engineering centre — six new classrooms taking capacity up to a thousand learners. Morgan Sindall built it ahead of schedule, their third project for the college.

TERRY: Good news if you're hiring. More training capacity in engineering and advanced manufacturing means a deeper local pool in two or three years.

DARREN: Which brings us to segment two, this week's local firm: Cullum Detuners.

TERRY: Detuners. What's a detuner when it's at home?

DARREN: Fair question. They design and build industrial ducting and damper systems — the kit that controls gas flows in power stations and process plants. The firm is headquartered in Derbyshire and dates back to nineteen fifty-five, but it opened a Stockton office at Preston Farm in twenty twenty-three, and it's that office that's just landed the serious work.

TERRY: The NZT Power contract.

DARREN: Right. Technip Energies has awarded Cullum the contract to procure, manufacture and install the high-specification flue gas ducting for NZT Power — the carbon capture power station at Teesworks. The ducting carries flue gas into the capture plant, so tolerances are tight. The work's managed from Stockton, fabrication is done by In-Spec in Middlesbrough, and final assembly happens in the former British Steel Plate Mill.

TERRY: And the jobs are real. Forty fabricators over a fifteen-month programme — twenty-five existing staff plus fifteen new positions. Cullum's sales director Kevin McEneny says the group's growing its Teesside presence too, with sister company JADE Insulation embedding staff at Preston Farm in the coming months.

TERRY: It checks out against Companies House as well — incorporated nineteen fifty-five and still filing on time. The takeaway is the shape of it: the headline contract goes to Technip, GE Vernova and Balfour Beatty, but the ducting, fabrication, insulation and assembly all flow down to firms with a Teesside postcode. That's where the door is.

DARREN: Final segment. This week's tip: on a big phased housing site, the earliest packages go before the show home does.

TERRY: Explain.

DARREN: Harrowgate Lane is the example. Nearly four hundred homes over five phases means years of sequential work, and housebuilders like Avant and Gleeson let most of it through regional subcontract packages. Groundworks, drainage and foundations come first — often let before any marketing suite opens. The approvals require a construction management plan per phase, and the junction works start inside six months, so the buying has already begun.

TERRY: So get onto the housebuilders' supply chain lists now — both run supplier registration on their websites — and chase the groundworks and civils packages, not the glossy site launch. Wait for the show home and you're quoting for phase four.

DARREN: That's it for this week. Sources and links for every story are in the show notes at teessidetradepodcast dot co dot uk.

TERRY: And if you know a Teesside firm we should profile, get in touch through the site. See you next Monday.