NORTH Tyneside made it a trio of mayoral flops for Labour, when Conservative candidate Chris Morgan romped to success in the second round of votes.

The new mayor now faces the intriguing prospect of having to work with a council which retained a comfortable Labour majority after Thursday's polling.

Yesterday, he made overtures to leading Labour councillors, hinting he might appoint some to his cabinet.

Elsewhere, Labour maintained its grip on councils in South Tyneside, Gateshead and Sunderland.

Labour remained firmly in control in Sunderland, despite the British National Party (BNP) fielding six candidates, who gained 1,537 votes between them - significantly up on the combined votes of parliamentary candidates in the General Election.

Labour lost one seat to the Conservatives and have 62 seats compared with 11 for the Tories.

The BNP beat the Tories into third place in the Southwick and Town End Farm wards.

In Gateshead, which had a full postal-voting system and one of the highest election turn-outs in the country at 57.4 per cent, Labour remained in control, losing just one seat to the Liberal Democrats.

The BNP fielded three candidates, who polled 865 votes between them.

In Newcastle, the Tories failed to capture a single seat, although the Liberal Democrats took two, including that of former deputy Labour leader Don Price.

South Tyneside held a full postal vote with electronic counting, one of just four boroughs in the county to use such a system.

Turn-out almost doubled to 53 per cent, compared with the last election in 2000, but there was no change in seats.

Hartlepool remains a hung council after a low-key election, with most attention focused on the mayoral contest, produced no real surprises.

Despite a 14.2 per cent swing of the vote towards Labour, it was not enough to upset the ruling Liberal Democrat-Conservative alliance that has controlled the town for two years.

With a low turnout - only 29 per cent - yesterday's local election count was always going to struggle to live up to the previous night's sensational mayoral result for H'Angus the Monkey.

Labour, still reeling from their 2000 reversal, retook just one seat, Seaton, where Michael Turner crept ahead of the Conservatives' David Young.

The only other gains both went to independents, in Elwick and St Hilda.

The leader of the Labour group, Councillor Russell Hart, said: "This is the start of a fightback which we hope to complete in 2003 when the whole council is up for election.

"The alliance has done its best, but its best has not been good enough. I think the town has reflected on what happened to us two years ago and is looking for positive alternatives."

John Lauderdale, deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats, said: "I do not feel Labour breathing down our necks.

"I think the alliance has done very, very well. I think Labour will be privately disappointed with its lack of progress."

The Conservatives had something to celebrate in North Yorkshire.

Gains were essential in the former Tory bastion of Harrogate if the party was to live up to its boast of a grassroots recovery.

By midnight, it did not look promising. The ruling Liberal Democrats had clinched double the number of seats and those wearing blue rosettes were beginning to look a little crestfallen.

But two hours later, the Harrogate Conference Centre had witnessed a remarkable turn around, with the Conservatives pushing for overall control for the first time in ten years.

In the end, power in the council chamber hinged on the results of a single ward - if the Tories dominated in Bilton, they would clinch control.

But in the last result to be declared, both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats took one seat each, leaving the result finely poised with the Liberal Democrats on 27 seats, the Conservatives on 26, and Ripon's Andrew Williams as the sole independent.