THE battle against voter apathy is being won by local authorities which have adopted postal ballots for this year's elections.

Councils taking part in the Government's pilot scheme on postal voting are noting record responses to the new system.

In some areas, response is up eight per cent on the turnouts of the last local elections.

Darlington Borough Council, one of ten North-East authorities taking part in the pilot, had 30,793 postal votes returned by Monday afternoon.

The figure represents a response of almost 41 per cent, compared with the turnout of 34 per cent four years ago.

A spokeswoman said: "This is the first time we've done a postal vote and it seems to have been very successful so far."

A computing error, which meant 600 first-time voters were not sent their ballot papers, has not stopped Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council beating the election turnout of four years ago.

The authority sent ballot papers to 105,000 people and has been delighted by a response of more than 40 per cent - about 42,000 voters.

In Prime Minister Tony Blair's constituency of Sedgefield, the 29.7 per cent turnout four years ago had been boosted to about 35 per cent by yesterday.

In Sunderland, by Friday evening the response had reached 30 per cent, compared with 22 per cent turnout at the last elections.

Derwentside District Council's returning officer, Mike Bonser, said: "By Tuesday morning, we had a 47 per cent turnout, which is already 15 per cent higher than the last election."