A COMPETITION for young people to vote for their favourite councillor has reached its conclusion.

Conservative councillor Doris Jones was the winning candidate in the Darlington I'm A Councillor Get Me Out of here competition.

The contest was part of a national competition organised as part of Local Democracy Week.

For the second year running, Darlington had the highest number of participants nationally with more than 727 questions asked and more than 500 votes cast.

The contest, which has been running since October 9, aims to encourage young people to take an interest in local politics by getting young people to meet the councillors on-line on the www.bigvote.org.uk website, ask questions and then vote for their favourite.

Coun Jones beat councillors Mark Burton, Jenny Chapman, Anne-Marie Curry, Alex Nicholson and Andrew Scott to win the Darlington competition.

Councillor Chapman, the council's member for Children and Young People said: "The debate and discussion has given us the freedom to dream about the kind of place young people would love to live in.

"I am now very much looking forward to working with them to explore how their involvement in local democracy can influence where they live and help them to realise their ambitions for the area."