A FIERCE battle for power on City of York Council will see established parties battle to hold on to seats and gain new ones - as fresh contenders challenge the status quo.

Nominations have closed for next month's elections with all group leaders determined to mount a fight for every vote going.

Labour council leader Dafydd Williams said he expected the election outcome to be very close, and so planned to spend every spare minute out on the doorsteps encouraging residents to vote for his party.

He said Labour had a positive programme for action but also wanted to prevent a local coalition of Tories and Lib Dems, who over the past four years had only supported cuts to York from Government rather than fight them.

Green leader Andy D'Agorne said the party was standing a full slate of 47 candidates for the first time ever after seeing its York membership treble in the past six months.

"As well as defending its two seats in Fishergate ward, held since 2003, the party expects to do well across the city and is in a strong position to gain councillors in Guildhall, where Green candidate and local chair Denise Craghill was second last time," he said, adding that the party was also in a very close second place in Micklegate.

Tory leader Chris Steward said that with some 'brilliant' candidates, the Conservatives were hoping to hold the seats it had and also make significant gains.

"Predictably much of the focus will be on the big multi member wards in York Outer of Dringhouses & Woodthorpe, Rawcliffe & Clifton Without and Haxby & Wigginton," he said.

"In York Central we are fighting across the city but, helped by long standing local candidates, our best performances may well be in Acomb, Guildhall and Micklegate."

Liberal Democrat leader Keith Aspden said his party would be contesting every single seat, adding: " Our candidates bring a range of skills and experience, from small business owners to teachers to working mums. What they all have is a determination to fight for their local community."

Judith Morris, chairman of York UKIP, said the party was meeting an 'incredible' response on the doorstep, with voters fed up of the old parties, and she fully expected UKIP to win a number of seats in wards in the York Central area, which was its primary target.

Andy Dickinson, of the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition (TUSC), which was only founded in 2010, and opposes all cuts to council jobs, services, pay and conditions, said it stood a candidate, Nigel Smith, in Heworth ward in 2011, and won seven per cent of the local vote - 'a strong debut that unsettled the main parties' - and Nigel would be standing in Heworth again, with seven more TUSC candidates joining him across the city.