Sir, - Your leading article (D&S Mar 1), comments on the damming verdict of the National Audit Office into the activities of the former Teesside Development Corporation

Having actually had the benefit of reading the full report, I simply fail to see how your editorial can argue that there was "no corruption" involved. At the core of the report is a single common thread of large scale land transactions, of which many were sold to developers and companies at well below market value. Given this, someone, somewhere, has made a killing.

Could I now turn to the wider issues in your editorial? You argue that the TDC "got things done". True, but one must ask whether many of those "things" were of any lasting and sustainable benefit to Teesside. Developing a large out-of-town shopping centre at Teesside Park, on easy developable land, is not exactly the stuff of rocket science, but it certainly had its impact on the viability of Stockton High Street and the shopping centre of Middlesbrough. Indeed, the impact on Stockton's town centre of such an out-of-town development financed by public money was so great that yet more public money had to be used to create a counterweight in the shape of the Wellington Square development.

In other instances "things" actually never happened. I have-by now lost count of the press launches (or, more accurately, press lunches) which were set up to unveil exciting new developments - hotels, energy parks, national museums, office ziggurats and ponte vecchio's - that promptly failed to materialise.

You argue that the TDC, despite its faults, was more to be trusted than the area's local authorities, and in particular you assert that if the former Cleveland County Council had been in the driving seat the government monies that it would have drawn down "would have disappeared into a pit of political nonsense and bureaucratic incompetence".

This is simply tosh. As a former Cleveland county councillor I could reel off a list of the many hundreds of local companies (such as Samsung), that got direct assistance from Cleveland County Council. Many people are now in good well-paid jobs working for companies attracted to this area by Cleveland County Council. They travel to work on a highway network which was developed by Cleveland County Council and their children are educated in a network of schools developed by Cleveland County Council.

That work continues today under the aegis of the unitary authorities of the Tees Valley, and will easily stand comparison with the work of a discredited and failed attempt by a past Conservative government to impose an alien political and economic culture on the people of Teesside.

Truly, your editorial echoes the famous quip of Benjamin Disraeli -"never complain, never explain"

DAVID WALSH

Leader, Redcar and Cleveland

Council,

Town Hall,

South Bank,

Middlesbrough.

Undeserving

Sir, - I have been following the latest police reforms put forward by the Home Secretary with some interest.

According to Mr Blunkett, police officers doing especially dangerous jobs will receive extra payments.

I wonder how many readers can think of a more dangerous job than a Royal Engineer having to find a way through a minefield with no more protection than a thin plastic 12-inch prod or a member of the Royal Logistic Corps having to disarm a car bomb.

They do not get extra money for these dangerous jobs so what could the police do that is any more dangerous and more deserving of extra pay?

Police stations are becoming more and more like incident reporting offices where people take their complaints but nothing is done, and the police wonder why they are losing the public's confidence?

If the police were patrolling the streets regularly then the public would have more confidence in them and the criminal element would think twice about raiding a shop or whatever knowing that at any moment a police man could walk round the corner.

According to the chairman of the Police Federation, his members are thinking of taking strike action if the Home Secretary imposes his new ideas on them. I thought they were on permanent strike because you very rarely see a police officer where I live.

The patrols the police carry out round here consist of a .005 second glance down the road from a police car which is driving down Topcliffe Road.

Here's a question for you, when was the last time you saw a police officer walking his beat? Apart from the last episode of Dixon of Dock Green, I cannot remember seeing one either.

P WEAVER

The Maltings,

Sowerby,

Thirsk.