Episode 9: 230 more homes for Darlington's garden village, Morgan Sindall on the airport station, and the Aberdeen firm planting roots in Billingham

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 firm worth knowing, and one practical tip.

DARREN: First up, Darlington. Homes by Esh has won planning approval for two hundred and thirty new homes at Burtree Garden Village in Faverdale — the next phase of one of the borough's biggest housing programmes.

TERRY: That's the site out towards Rotary Way.

DARREN: It is. The council's planning committee approved the scheme on the twenty-third of September for land at High Faverdale Farm. The mix is two, three and four-bedroom houses, with forty-six affordable homes, plus open space, drainage infrastructure and walking and cycling links.

TERRY: And this isn't a one-off phase.

DARREN: Far from it. It follows a hundred and thirty homes approved at Burtree in May, and the wider garden village — led by the Hellens Group and Homes England — is planned for around two thousand homes over the next twenty years, with two million square feet of employment space, a primary school, a community centre and health facilities alongside.

TERRY: Esh's technical director Dale Morris said the company's been working closely with the council, and the focus stays on quality, design-led homes for Darlington.

DARREN: For local firms, a twenty-year programme on the doorstep is as close to a guaranteed pipeline as housing work gets. Groundworks, bricklaying, roofing and landscaping packages will run for years.

TERRY: Second story — a big name on a small ticket.

DARREN: Tees Valley Combined Authority has picked Morgan Sindall Construction and Infrastructure for early contractor involvement on the new Teesside Airport rail station. The package is worth just under a hundred and fourteen thousand pounds — Morgan Sindall will review the stage two engineering work and test how buildable the designs are across three shortlisted station locations. The initial appointment runs from October to April twenty twenty-eight, with an option to extend another year.

TERRY: Small money, but it matters.

DARREN: Exactly. A new station for the airport has been talked about for years. Appointing an early contractor is the point where a project stops being a drawing and starts becoming a build. And it's the second station contract of this kind the combined authority has let in recent months — Redcar Central got one over the summer.

TERRY: Third, over to Hartlepool, where councillors have approved a hundred and sixteen new homes at High Tunstall.

DARREN: Charles Church, Persimmon's premium brand, is the builder. The site is south of Elwick Road, part of the second phase of the High Tunstall strategic development, and the mix is big family houses — ninety four-beds and twenty-six five-beds. Another Elwick Road scheme, for a hundred and sixty-two homes, has already been approved, so that western edge of town is turning into a long-running site for Hartlepool trades.

TERRY: Segment two — this week's firm: Three sixty Energy.

DARREN: Aberdeen-headquartered, but they've planted a flag on Teesside. They opened a Teesside office in February twenty twenty-five as a long-term commitment to the region, and Billingham is now their regional hub for onshore industrial process work.

TERRY: And they've just won work.

DARREN: They have. Earlier this month they announced a multi-discipline engineering and design services contract with C F Fertilisers U K, supporting C F's facilities at Billingham and North Tees — two of the most important process plants in the region. The firm called the deal a great vote of confidence, and says it will create further employment as the Billingham office scales.

TERRY: C F Fertilisers — that's the plant tied into UK food security.

DARREN: That's right — high-grade fertiliser for the global market, critical to agricultural supply chains. And the pattern is one we keep seeing: an outside firm opens a Teesside hub, hires local engineers, and starts picking up process-sector work. The record checks out, too — the company was founded in twenty sixteen, employs several hundred people across the UK, Europe and beyond, and says Teesside's industrial heritage and skilled workforce are exactly why they came.

TERRY: For local subcontractors — electrical, instrumentation, fabrication shops — a new regional hub like this is a door worth knocking on early.

DARREN: Final segment. This week's tip: chase the small tickets, because they open the big doors.

TERRY: Explain.

DARREN: Look at this week alone. A hundred and fourteen thousand for the airport station involvement package. A hundred and sixty-nine thousand for a portacabin extension at the airport's Digital Trade Testbed, which went to Anmer Construction. The combined authority lets packages like this constantly — and plenty of them are winnable for a decent local firm.

TERRY: Because the nationals don't always chase a hundred-grand ticket.

DARREN: Right. So register on Contracts Finder and the combined authority's procurement portal, set alerts for Tees Valley work, and bid the small stuff. Deliver well on an early-stage package and you're the known quantity when the main works get let. The small ticket is the audition.

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

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