MORE than £500,000 was spent in the failed attempt to persuade North-East voters to back a directly-elected assembly for the region.

Accounts published yesterday by the Electoral Commission reveal that Yes4TheNorthEast - the main campaign group backing the proposal - spent a total of £361,091 trying to win the referendum campaign, more than double the £145,000 spent by the victorious North-East Says No.

When added to the cash spent by Labour, Liberal Democrats and trade unions, a total of £525,000 was spent trying to win a Yes vote, compared to just over £200,000 spent by all those campaigning against the proposed assembly.

Despite the spending imbalance, the region rejected the assembly in November's referendum with a 78 per cent No vote.

The figures mean that Yes campaigners spent £2.66 for each of the 197,310 votes they attracted in the poll.

The Yes4TheNorthEast accounts also reveal the donations from high-profile financial backers of the campaign - £50,000 from Lady Mae Hall, wife of millionaire entrepreneur and potential assembly candidate Sir John Hall, and £50,000 from the Tyneside Preparation Cluster, the body based at the Swan Hunter shipyard that represents maritime and offshore businesses.

Other donations to the campaign were £20,000 from the GMB trade union, £20,000 from Tyneside-based consultancy firm Sovereign Strategy, whose board members include former North- East MEP Alan Donnelly, ex-Newcastle United chief executive Freddie Fletcher, former Labour Cabinet minister Jack Cunningham, and £10,000 from Browell Smith, the solicitors firm that has strong links with the trade unions.

Yes4TheNorthEast also declared a number of donations in kind.

These included just over £20,000 from the public sector trade union Unison and just over £5,000 from Newcastle-based solicitors Thompsons for buying press adverts on its behalf; just under £10,000 from Express Engineering (Thompson) Limited and Express Holdings (Thompson) Limited, both based on The Team Valley Estate at Gateshead for buying advertising on its behalf; and £15,000 from Nova International, the Newcastle-based company run by former Olympic athlete Brendan Foster, for producing the campaign's referendum broadcast.

Figures for the amount spent by North-East Says No and the other bodies taking part in the referendum were published in March, but the release of the Yes4TheNorthEast accounts was delayed because the amounts involved were much larger.

As well as the money spent by private organisations in attempting to persuade the public over how to cast their votes, the referendum has also left taxpayers with a bill expected to top £10m for staging the poll.

These include £2.9m for staging the postal ballot, £3.2m for distributing the Government's information campaign, £3.9m for the accompanying Local Government Review and £200,000 for ministerial campaigning by Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott and Nick Raynsford.