FRESH attempts are being made to get a town's silverware back.

Thornaby Town Council is trying to have the town's mayoral chains of office and other regalia, including the mace, returned from Stockton Borough Council.

Town councillors agreed at a full council meeting earlier this week to send a letter to Stockton Borough Council requesting that the mayor's chains and regalia be returned.

Issues surrounding insurance and security will also be investigated.

Councillor Bob Gibson, leader of Stockton Borough Council, said he had no problem personally with the regalia being put on display in Thornaby, but the issue would have to be examined by the council when the letter arrived.

If the chains were handed back to Thornaby, new chains for Stockton Council's deputy mayor would have to be bought.

The regalia has not been kept in Thornaby since 1968 when Thornaby Borough Council was abolished and replaced with Cleveland County Council, itself now defunct.

The chains and mace were later passed on to Stockton Borough Council, which incorporates Thornaby.

The last serious attempt by Thornaby Town Council to have the regalia returned came in 1996 but Stockton Borough Council refused because it said it had been placed in the borough council's ownership by law.

Councillor Steve Walmsley, a member of Stockton Borough Council representing the Mandale ward in Thornaby, said the chains should be returned.

He said: "Thornaby is south of the river and was always Yorkshire by the old boundaries and Stockton was Durham so it was like our heritage was sold from under our feet when they took our mayor's chains."

Meanwhile, Thornaby Town Council has also resolved to again investigate the reasons why silverware, once belonging to the 608 RAF Squadron, which was in Thornaby, is held by Middlesbrough Council.

The squadron, disbanded in 1958, handed their model fighter aircraft, candlesticks and decanters, valued at £12,700 in 1991, to Middlesbrough for safekeeping.

A request to have the silverware returned was turned down in 1993 by Middlesbrough councillors, who said their pledge to act as guardians to the silverware should not be broken.