A SENIOR councillor has said he wishes his authority could do more to tackle the region’s cost of living crisis as he awaited results from the local elections.

Carl Les, North Yorkshire county council’s leader for the last administration, also said there would be “no place to hide” in the new unitary authority administration which is coming into force in 2023.

Read more: Election 2022 LIVE: Results in North East and North Yorkshire

Speaking at the Richmondshire count this morning, Mr Les said: “I think what is always nervous leading up to the results is that you do all the hard work the week before and if you’re incumbent you do work for four or five years before the election.

“I have a friend who used to be a county councillor and he used to say, if you do your homework the exams not so difficult.

“But you never know and there’s always things that might just influence it, and it’s the same for whatever council you’re standing for.”

Mr Les said he hoped voters made their judgement on the ‘track record of the last five years’ “The alternative council in which case this is one of the reasons we’re so keen on having a unitary council going forward because it’s just one council doing everything and there’s no place to hide.

“But then you get national issues coming into play and clearly there are national issues coming into play at the moment.

“I hope that people will be judging us on our record because I think that the county council for the last five years has had a very good track record of delivering high quality services, facing a lot of big challenges not least of which was Covid.

“But we’ve tackled those challenges while still being a low taxing authority as well, and that’s our contribution to the cost of living crisis at the moment, I wish we could do more , we do have a local assistance fund as well where we can help people in dire need, but let’s see what the results come out like and hopefully we will still form an administration at North Yorkshire.

“Of course now the big thing about this election is that we’re electing 90 councillors going forward into a new unitary authority, and that’s a big adventure for local government and the biggest change since 1974”

Results from North Yorkshire are set to come in throughout the day.

Keep up to date with all the latest news on our website, or follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

You can also follow our dedicated North Yorkshire Facebook page for all the latest in the area by clicking here.

For all the top news updates from right across the region straight to your inbox, sign up to our newsletter here.

Have you got a story for us? Contact our newsdesk on newsdesk@nne.co.uk or contact 01325 50505