AN MP is appealing to Government agencies not to repeat the mistakes of an urban regeneration quango blamed for wasting up to £40m.

Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland MP Ashok Kumar's warning coincided with the tenth anniversary today of the coming into operation of the Tees Barrage, at Stockton.

The Labour MP said: "The barrage was one of the most expensive projects commissioned by the Teesside Development Corporation (TDC).

"Although, obviously, it is a great amenity for the area, one wonders what the real cost was, if we add on the millions that went missing to that of the barrage."

He added: "How much it really cost Teesside, one probably will never know.

"Let us hope the problems that beset the TDC will never occur again and present-day agencies do not repeat the mistakes of their predecessor."

A National Audit Office report revealed in 2002 the deficit left by the TDC could be as high as £40m.

The now-defunct corporation, which came into being following Margaret Thatcher's famous "walk in the wilderness" along the Thornaby bank of the River Tees, in 1987, was criticised in the report for multi-million pound risk taking, disregarding Treasury rules, and granting loans that were not officially allowed.

The building of the barrage transformed the Tees upstream from Stockton to Worsall, North Yorkshire, into a 12-mile non-tidal lake, the flow of the river controlled by the barrage's four 50-tonne gates, operated by 20-ton hydraulics.

At the time the barrage was built, it was the biggest civil engineering project undertaken in Britain and it won two national awards.

But the people of Yarm are convinced the barrage resulted in upstream waters being kept at the high water mark, accelerating the erosion of the town's river banks.