By Brian Allison, local government reporter, and Alan Wilson

AFTER WEEKS of behind-the- scenes negotiations and public sniping between political parties, the new administration of Dundee City Council finally took power last night with very little fuss.

As expected the SNP, despite being the largest single party with 13 of the 29 seats, were kept out of any role in the administration.

A coalition of Labour (10 seats) and the Liberal Demo-crats (two), supported informally by the three-man Conservative group ensured that the SNP were frozen out for the second council in succession.

Those three parties succeeded in taking all the major committee convenerships and deputes as well as the offices of lord provost and depute lord provost.

John Letford was once again elected to serve as lord provost and will be Dundee’s figurehead for another four years.

The SNP put forward their own nominees for all of the posts but on every vote they were defeated by 15-14, Independent councillor Ian Borthwick having sided with them.

Although there was only one vote in it each time, there was never any real doubt about the outcome as the parties had declared their intentions in advance.

The new leader of the administration is Labour’s former education convener Kevin Keenan, who also becomes convener of the policy and resources committee.

Education, which is the biggest spending department of the council, has new member Laurie Bidwell as convener of the committee.

Conservative group leader Rod Wallace retains the development quality convenership, which is a non-political committee.

Liberal Democrat group leader Fraser Macpherson, finance convener in the previous administration, gets the planning and transport brief this time.

All the other major committees have Labour councillors in the chair.

Helen Wright has social work and health; George Regan takes on housing, Dundee Contracts and environment services; Joe Morrow has economic development; Richard McCready is the leisure, arts and communities convener; and Mr Letford heads the licensing committee.

The number of committees has been substantially reduced following a restructuring which involved amalgamations of responsibilities.

However, most of the committees will meet fortnightly instead of monthly and will start an hour earlier, at 6pm.

Last night the first function of the new administration was to decide who would be the new lord provost and two candidates were put forward by the Labour/Lib Dem coalition and the SNP.

Mr Keenan proposed Mr Letford, while SNP group leader Ken Guild proposed James Barrie.

The matter then went to a vote and Mr Letford beat Mr Barrie by 15 votes to 14.

Mr Letford was duly sworn in by chief executive Alex Stephen and took his seat in the chair at the council meeting.

Addressing the meeting Mr Letford said, “Once again I’m proud to be elected lord provost of the city of Dundee.

“I would like to thank my colleagues and those who voted for me, and also every elected member for the support that was given to me in the last four years and my family obviously, for giving me that support for what is a challenging and demanding role.”

Completing the four-year term would take Mr Letford up to 10 years’ service as the civic leader.

Later, in an identical situation, Labour councillor Joe Morrow was elected as depute lord provost, beating SNP councillor Elizabeth Fordyce by the same margin.