The proposed new medical school Teesside’s leaders have been pursuing since 2023 is back in the spotlight. Teesside University is pressing ahead with its bid to open a medical school for the Tees Valley, and local NHS leaders are now publicly backing it as part of an effort to recruit and keep doctors in the region. Here is the honest version: the school does not exist yet. What exists is a serious, funded bid – a £36.9 million teaching facility, a signed agreement with the local council, and hospital trust bosses saying they need it. If you are thinking of applying to medicine, or you train juniors, this story deserves your attention.
What has actually been announced
The story starts in November 2023. At the launch of BIOS, the university’s £36.9 million health sciences facility in Middlesbrough, Vice-Chancellor Professor Paul Croney OBE confirmed its strategic intent to establish a medical school for the Tees Valley. BIOS is part of the case: four floors of simulation suites, mock operating theatres and a digital anatomy facility, built to show the university can train clinicians at scale (Tees Business).
In November 2024, Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council backed a formal agreement with the university: feasibility work on a possible site at Teesdale Business Park, and a joint case to government – including meeting the General Medical Council’s standards for approving the qualification (Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council).
In March 2025, the plan won vocal support from the people who would actually train the students. At a University Hospitals Tees board meeting, board of governors chair Ada Burns pointed to “widening opportunities for young people in the Tees Valley to gain access and develop a career in medicine”, while group chief executive Stacey Hunter said the trusts were “absolutely supportive of that ambition”. Most recently, the combined University Hospitals Tees group’s published plan names the medical school ambition as a key route to recruiting and retaining clinical staff.
Why the North East needs more doctors
England is short of doctors, and the shortage is not spread evenly. The NHS Long Term Workforce Plan commits to doubling medical school places in England from around 7,500 a year to 15,000 by 2031, and the places being added are deliberately aimed at under-doctored areas. For 2025/26, the Office for Students allocated 350 extra places, with the University of Sunderland – the North East’s newest medical school – among the biggest winners at 17 additional places (National Health Executive).
The British Medical Association calls this a chronic workforce crisis: NHS doctor numbers are up roughly 26% since 2020, yet demand has risen faster still – in June 2025, nearly one in four A&E patients waited more than four hours, versus 13.6% before the pandemic. Training more doctors locally matters because doctors tend to put down roots where they train, and the North East has historically exported too many of its school-leavers to medical schools elsewhere. I wrote recently about how that same pull shapes new graduates weighing up underserved areas – the geography of training sticks with you.
New Medical School Teesside: What It Means for Future Doctors
So what would a Teesside medical school actually change for someone applying, or for a junior like me? Three things stand out.
1. A door opens closer to home
Every year, strong applicants from the Tees Valley compete for places hundreds of miles away, or miss out entirely. A local school with a stated widening-access mission changes the maths: it could become one of the more realistic routes in for state-school applicants and career changers from the North East who cannot simply relocate to London.
2. Clinical training in communities that need doctors
Medical students learn in the hospitals and GP practices around their school. For Teesside that means placements across the Tees Valley, including areas with some of England’s starkest health inequalities. It is the kind of medicine that teaches you early how deprivation shapes disease – the lesson every good doctor eventually learns, just sooner.
3. Jobs for junior doctors like me
A new school would need clinical teachers, anatomy demonstrators and research collaborators – the early-career academic roles juniors chase. If it gets the green light, Teesside could become one of the North East’s more interesting places to combine clinical work with teaching.
Questions applicants keep asking
Is the Teesside medical school definitely happening?
No. It is a bid with serious institutional backing, not an approved school. It still needs government sign-off and GMC approval before a single student can enrol.
When would it open?
No date has been announced. Anyone telling you otherwise is guessing.
Would it help me get in?
More places anywhere help every applicant. A new northern school would most help applicants from the region it serves, if it holds to its widening-access promise.
I remember how far some of my classmates travelled to get into medical school, and how many never applied because the whole thing felt like it belonged to someone else. A medical school in Middlesbrough will not fix the NHS workforce crisis on its own. But it would put a stethoscope within reach of teenagers who have never met a doctor who sounds like them. That is worth rooting for, whatever happens with the bid.
Note: this article covers medical education policy, not health advice. For medical concerns, please speak to your own clinician.