Teesside and County Durham stories you might have missed

Calls for an investigation into breast cancer care and a three-year road closure have been in the news.

You can read more about them here as well as some other headline-making events from Teesside and County Durham you might have missed over the last week.

Calls are being made for an independent inquiry into breast cancer care at an NHS trust.

The BBC learned patients suffered unnecessary mastectomies, delayed diagnoses and a lack of compassionate care at County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust.

Steve Russell, new chief executive of the trust, said the breast service today was "very different" and reiterated his apology to "the patients, families, communities and colleagues who have been affected".

Former patient Kate Driver, from Chester-le-Street, is among those calling for a public inquiry into the failings, and said: "Everybody deserves to know and our families deserve to know."

• Read more here.

Residents of a remote village say they feel "isolated" as one of the main roads out of it has been closed for nearly three years.

The C31 into Hamsterley, near Bishop Auckland, was fenced off after part of the surface slipped into the River Wear in January 2023.

Marc Shepherd has lived in the village for six years and said the closure, combined with work on nearby Wolsingham Bridge, had added 20 minutes to his morning commute.

Mark Readman, Durham County Council's head of highway services, said the subsidence issues were "incredibly complex and there isn't a simple solution".

• Read more here.

About two in five trains were recorded as arriving late to the Tees Valley's worst railway station for delayed services.

Yarm had the highest percentage of delayed trains in the area, according to documents presented to the transport committee of the Tees Valley Combined Authority.

A report showed only 58% of trains calling at Yarm in January arrived within three minutes of the scheduled time. Over the rest of 2025, the proportion of timely trains fluctuated between 61% and 69%.

The committee heard the station was served by Transpennine Express as part of a long-distance line running through Leeds and Manchester, which could bring "significant performance risk".

• Read more here.

Inspectors have decided a town's lamp-posts are not suited to supporting Christmas decorations this year.

Durham County Council inspects its lamp-posts every year to make sure they are able to safely hold the size and weight of festive lights, and Ferryhill's street lights failed the test.

Ferryhill Labour councillor Curtis Bihari said he was "gutted" the lights could not be used this year and highlighted how previously "they have always passed the test".

Paul Watson, Durham County Council's highways service manager, said the "columns remain safe and stable for the existing street lighting units".

• Read more here.

BP has pulled out of building a hydrogen plant on Teesside following a row over whether the site would be better suited to housing a data centre instead.

A government decision on whether the plant at Teesworks in Redcar could be built had been due imminently.

But the energy firm backed out before the decision could be made, citing a "material change in circumstances" to the land that the plant had been due to be built on.

The project, H2Teesside, had been mired in controversy after landowners South Tees Group (STG) sought permission to build a data centre there instead. Teesworks Ltd, which is part of STG, said it wanted to maximise the land's benefit for locals.

• Read more here.

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