THE people of Redcar and Cleveland have lost out on as much as £20m in the past ten years because the Government got its figures wrong, it was claimed yesterday.

Council leader David Walsh has called on Chancellor Gordon Brown to come to Eston Town Hall with a backdated cheque made out to the borough.

The 2001 census has shown that the Government underestimated the population of east Cleveland by 2,700.

Population is one of the main parts of a formula used by the Government when working out how much money to grant councils each year.

The formula sometimes changes, but financial staff at Redcar and Cleveland have made a rough calculation that up to £20m could have been lost to the area, before and after the creation of the authority from the remains of Cleveland County Council in 1996.

Mr Walsh said: "It would be very nice if Gordon Brown called with a fat cheque back-dated for ten years, but it is extremely doubtful that will happen.

"However, I would hope that the new population figures will give us a very good chance of receiving more help from the Government ahead of next year's budget - as long as they don't change the goalposts again."

However, a spokesman for the Government Office for the North-East revealed that there will not be any pay out of backdated money.

He said: "We will be considering the implications of the new population data alongside all of the other issues as we operate the new grant distribution system all through the autumn.

"We have already guaranteed that no authority will get less grant next year. We have to use the best estimates that are available at any given time. We cannot act retrospectively to reallocate money that has already been spent."

The census revealed that 139,100 people are living in the borough although the Government's Register General put the figure at 136,400.

Statisticians use the census as a starting point to work out populations in the ten years between each count. They also examine birth and death registers, migration within Britain, usually using doctors' registration documents, and international migration using international passenger surveys.