Discussions to form a centre-left coalition council have begun after the Conservatives were ousted as the leading party at last week’s elections.

The former opposition is poised to take over Canterbury City Council but with no overall majority, the group says it is seeking an alliance with other parties to form an administration.

Reduced to a minority administration by defections in recent weeks, the district’s Tories are now set to be only the third biggest party on the local authority.

Labour won 18 seats, doubling their councillors, the Liberal Democrats won nine, with eight going to the Conservatives and four to the Greens.

This means Labour could form a majority on the 39-seat authority by entering a coalition with the Green Party and/or the Liberal Democrats.

With the Lib Dems and Conservatives making only 17 seats between them, Labour could feasibly govern as a minority if they were confident that Greens wouldn’t vote down their plans.

The Green Party increased their representation by 300%, previously having only one councillor, Gorrell representative Clare Turnbull.

It is understood discussions are taking place between Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens to decide what the next administration will look like.

Controversial council leader Ben Fitter-Harding was sent packing from his Chestfield seat at the polls, with the Tories losing both seats for the ward by well over 700 votes to the Lib Dems.

"It's a horrible feeling, not because of losing, although that's always hard, but because of not being able to represent the people of Canterbury, the people of Chestfield,” he said on Friday.

Labour group leader, and likely next leader of the council Alan Baldock, said: “We’ve opened up channels of communications with both the Lib Dems and the Greens and we will see whether between us we can work out a way of them joining us in running the council.”

He emphasised that on core policy areas his party is largely in agreement with both the Greens and the Liberal Democrats.

“The new council must try as hard as it can to reflect what the election was fought on,” he said.

He emphasised the importance of “getting an agreement, doing policy with people rather than at people”.

“Things are going to be tough so we knew that we need to take the community with us in our policy, and that means we need to reflect the views of parties that have similar values.

“We will try to involve as many people as possible in that decision making process, if that means we have to make some formal alliances on board then so be it.”

Local Labour Party branches are subject to oversight from the party at a national level - they cannot enter electoral pacts with other parties, and any arrangements for administration of local councils involving other parties have to be approved by Labour’s National Executive Committee.

Both the Lib Dems and Greens’ manifestos expressed support for moving back towards a committee structure of council - the authority controversially adopted a cabinet structure under the previous leader Ben Fitter-Harding.

However, Cllr Baldock made clear that under the council’s constitution, they could not return to a committee structure until after the term of the new council, and that a Labour-led administration will look at governance matters such as town councils for Whitstable and Herne Bay in this term.

“We will consider other aspects of governance within this term, but the cabinet system will stay for now,” he said.

Veteran city councillor and Lib Dem leader Michael Dixey also hinted at possible co-operation with Labour and the Greens.

“We certainly all agree on most major issues – the Local Plan needs completely revising, the traffic zones and bypasses are history, and there are a number of other major things which we all agree on,” the Westgate representative said.

However, he added: “I think we all respect each other, we get on well, but that’s not the same as agreeing how we should proceed in future, but we’ve made progress.”

At the vote count on Friday, Canterbury’s Labour MP Rosie Duffield expressed sympathy with a Lib-Lab coalition locally.

“We’ll be seeking to work with the other parties as best we can, and seeking to maximise all opportunities...”

“We do work together locally, we’re all friends, we all know each other, I think that would work really well,” she said.

The leader of the newly-enlarged Green group on the council Clare Turnbull is also hopeful for cross-party working.

“I think there’s a lot of common ground,” she said.

“Obviously all the other parties were concerned by the Local Plan and the implications for the district, the amount of housing which was included in there in order to fund a bypass, I think there’s an awful lot of ground on wanting to find different ways of doing that.

“We’ll be seeking to work with the other parties as best we can, and seeking to maximise all opportunities to work together for the benefit of local people.”