The borough of Middlesbrough is the smallest of the five, at only 54 square kilometres (21 sq mi) and a population of 148,285: the Stockton-on-Tees borough (including multiple towns) is the largest with an area of 205 square kilometres (79 sq mi) and a population of 199,966, as of 2022.

Middleton St George, Hartlepool and Billingham were in Stockton ward, the latter two were also in a district called Hartness.

[4] South Tees was under a wapentake called Langbaurgh, which had been the Easton part of the ancient region of Cleveland, in Yorkshire's North Riding.

The 1974 reforms created the county of Cleveland, including Hartlepool, the former Urban Districts of Guisborough, Saltburn and Marske, Skelton and Brotton and Loftus.

The following is a chart of the Gross Value Added to the UK economy by the Tees Valley Combined Authority region, aggregated by industry.

It was initiated by the local enterprise partnership Tees Valley Unlimited and its creation was announced by the government in 2011.

These sites are Wilton International and South Bank Wharf, both in Redcar and Cleveland, Port Estates in Hartlepool and New Energy and Technology Park in Billingham, Stockton-on-Tees.

[12] In March 2015 the government announced that a thirteenth site is to be added, South Bank Wharf Prairie, aimed at oil and gas decommissioning business.

ICI was broken up, and its many chemical manufacturing units are now operated by a large number of companies that have acquired its assets.

The Teesside Steelworks near Redcar was the biggest blast furnace in Europe and was operated in its final years by Sahaviriya Steel Industries (SSI).

The many chemistry-based businesses on Teesside[14] include Huntsman Tioxide plant at Greatham makes titanium dioxide.

Johnson Matthey Catalysts and Fujifilm Dyosynth Biologics have manufacturing units in Billingham while the Lucite International Acrylics factory and the Mitsubishi battery chemical plant are on the other side of the town.

Aldous Huxley's visit to the former ICI plant in Billingham inspired Brave New World and this unit now makes fertiliser for Growhow, using 1% of the UK's natural gas.

ConocoPhillips refinery, BP Cats, Harvest Energy Biodiesel unit, Greenery Fuels, Fine Organics, Vertelus speciality chemicals and Ineos Nitriles are all based at Seal Sands, with Vopak and Simon Storage tank storage businesses nearby.

Teesport is on the River Tees and is currently the third largest port in the United Kingdom, and amongst the ten biggest in Western Europe, in terms of tonnage shipped.

This port handles over 56 million tonnes of goods per annum which are mainly associated with the local petrochemical, chemical and steel processing industries.

CrossCountry operate regular services from Darlington to Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, Scotland, Leeds, Birmingham and southwest England.

As of the 2022-2 season, there are fourteen Rugby Union Football Clubs in the region, Darlington Mowden Park is in the highest division compared to the rest of the clubs: ECB PL's North Yorkshire and South Durham Cricket League: