When will the result of the North East Mayor election be declared?

The first mayor of the North East will represent a population of around two million people spread across Tyne and Wear, Northumberland, and Durham.

The election being held this Thursday, May 2, follows the agreement of a multi-billion pound devolution deal with the government, bringing new funding and decision-making powers to the region.

There are six names on the ballot – independent Jamie Driscoll, Labour’s Kim McGuinness, Conservative Guy Renner-Thompson, the Green Party’s Andrew Gray, Lib Dem Aidan King, and Reform UK’s Paul Donaghy.

While polls close at 10pm on Thursday night and some councils will begin counting their local election results overnight, the result of the mayoral election will not be known until the afternoon of Friday, May 3.

Separate counts are being held across each of the seven areas that the new mayor will cover – those being Newcastle, Gateshead, Sunderland, South Tyneside, North Tyneside, Northumberland and Durham.

Those counts will start between 10am and 11.30am and the result from each centre will then be fed into the main returning centre at the Silksworth sports complex in Sunderland, where they will be collated to produce an overall tally for the region.

A declaration is expected to be made by Sunderland City Council chief executive Patrick Melia early on Friday afternoon, no later than 2pm.