Who will lead Bradford Council was unclear today after Labour made gains at the expense of the previously ruling Tory group in the local elections.

Labour bucked the trend of its dismal showing in town hall elections across England to become the single biggest party on the Council.

But it failed to win enough seats to enjoy overall control and crucial power-sharing talks with the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats will now take place.

Labour holds 36 of the Council's 90 seats three more than the Conservatives who lost four seats although the expected shake-up of both leadership and the decision-making executive committee is not likely to become clear until early next week.

The Lib Dems lost one seat to end with 14, the Greens still have four councillors, the BNP now only has two and there is one independent.

After all the counts yesterday a jubilant Labour group leader, Ian Greenwood, pictured, pledged the BNP would be frozen out of any power-sharing talks.

He said: "We are the largest party on Bradford Council, although we have no majority.

"We will talk with all the other parties apart from the BNP and won't be making any decision until after the group's annual meeting on Monday.

"My concern is to ensure we maintain our policy programme and principles."

Labour last controlled the authority in 1999. But since 2000 no party has had overall control and an uneasy partner-ship formed between the Tories and the Liberal Democrats.

Coun Greenwood said: "We be-lieve that people have recog-nised that Conservatives com-plete inability to run City Hall.

"The Tories have made a mess of running the Council and the people of Bradford have dem-onstrated that they don't want them in leadership.

Running City Hall more effi-ciently, education and im-provements in the environment will his top priorities, he said.

And if not for recent national issues with the Labour party, he predicted his group would have won more seats.

Both Conservative group leader Margaret Eaton and Liberal Democrat group leader Jeanette Sunderland have con-firmed they are open to discus-sions on the future of the Coun-cil with the Labour.

Councillor Eaton said: "It's the first time in by 20 years that the local elections have had abso-lutely nothing to do with local issues."

"It was entirely decided by the image of national leaders. If we look across West Yorkshire it's almost as if we are not like the rest of the country. Unfortu-nately Bradford seems to be al-ways fairly turbulent."

"I would have preferred us to be the largest party on the Council but we are not."

Councillor Sunderland said: "I will meet with my colleagues over the weekend and analyse the results and discuss how we move the Liberal Democrat group forward.

"There is no truth in the ru-mours of any form of deal be-tween the Lib Dems and the Labour group or the Tories."

Bradford Labour MPs greeted the election result with delight.

Bradford North MP Terry Roo-ney said: "It was a great result. We had six net gains and cer-tainly bucked the national trend.

"We had strong candidates and they did extremely well. I think people were getting fed up with the past five years of Conserva-tive and Lib Dem alliance and not getting results."

But despite the BNP suffering a net loss of one seat on the Council Mr Rooney said there was still "a big issue" to ad-dress.

He added: "They polled large numbers of votes and it is a big challenge for the city's leader-ship to work out how we are go-ing to deal with it.

"People obviously have con-cerns they feel are not being addressed and we need to communicate those concerns and with those people."

MP for Bradford South Gerry Sutcliffe said: "I am really pleased a fantastic result. We are now the largest party and have taken seats and other parties did not make the breakthrough we expected.

"We work hard in the area and have great councillors.

"The national events of the last few days would not have helped and maybe people moved their support to the BNP. But people will realise they are not the answer and cannot offer the solution."

MP for Keighley Ann Cryer said: "I cannot describe how happy I am.

"We have not got a single BNP councillor in Keighley for the first time in two years.

"I know the party will not go away and I do not expect we have seen the back of them but for now they are gone."

* In Leeds the overall picture remained static with no change for Labour (40 seats), the Lib-eral Democrats (26 seats), the Conservatives (24 seats) and the Greens (three seats). The BNP gained its first seat in Leeds and the remaining five seats went to independents.

Kirklees Council remained hung although the Conserva-tives gained to become the largest party over the Liberal Democrats. It left the Conserva-tives with 21 seats, the Liberal Democrats and Labour both with 20, the Greens and the BNP with three each and two Independents.

In Calderdale no party holds overall control again. The Con-servatives dropped one to 20 seats, the Liberal Democrats gained one to make 16 seats, Labour have ten seats after gaining one. The BNP lost one to make two seats and the inde-pendents held on to three.

ends