The Tory Tees Valley Mayor has sought to ease concerns after claims that a 90-acre piece of land worth millions was sold for just 100.

Last month, Labour Middlesbrough MP Andy McDonald, citing a Private Eye article in Parliament, said the only economic growth being delivered at Teesworks “is into the accounts of Ben Houchen’s pals, Messrs Musgrave and Corney”. He alleged “industrial-scale corruption” at the UK’s largest freeport and claimed that land at a 90-acre site was bought for just 1 an acre.

However, documents seen by the Local Democracy Reporting Service show that the land, which will soon be home to offshore wind factory SeAH, was disposed of for 15m. It is also understood that two separate valuations, from assessors registered with the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, put the land at 13m and 11.8m.

Concerns were raised about the land being sold for 1 an acre after the amount noted on a transfer document from HM Land Registry was 96.79 plus VAT. However, Tees Valley Mayor Ben Houchen confirmed that developers Chris Musgrave and Martin Corney paid South Tees Development Ltd 15m for the land.

Mr Houchen said that a separate valuation was carried out specifically for the SeAH site. He added: “Otherwise, the whole [Teesworks] site would be worth minus hundreds of millions of pounds but actually that one site had value and that value should be realised by the public sector because we already had an arrangement in place.”

The estimated remediation cost for the...

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