With campaigning for the local election entering its final stages, the Conservatives are setting their sights on key battlegrounds.

With pressure on Iain Duncan Smith to deliver results, senior party figures want to see big gains on the 3750 the Tories already hold in local government.

There is also pressure to do well in both Scotland and Wales which will be crucial indicators for the general election.

In Scotland the Conservatives must build on the 19 seats in the parliament to show they can reverse the decline in their presence north of the border.

The proportional voting system in Wales gave the party one directly elected seat and eight top-up seats in the first historic poll of 1999.

But all eyes will be on the local council results - a key power base for the party.

In England it controls 83 of the councils up for election.

Local government spokesman Eric Pickles says the party should be happy to make modest gains because the Conservatives gained over 1300 seats in 1999.

"Anything over 50 will be a triumph. We're expecting about 35 because we took some serious Labour seats the last time so to take more will be going on to a higher plateau," he said.

Central Office strategists point to the fact that the party is contesting a higher proportion of seats - 8710 in total - and that Labour is fighting a lower percentage of seats.

"Put simply, we are fielding nearly 2000 more candidates more than either of our opponents," said a spokesman.

An unofficial figure of 300 seats is being used as a guide but Labour have claimed the figure has to be around 1,000 for the party to be safe.

Predicted gains focus on Kent wards such as Medway and Dover plus coastal councils of Poole, and Brighton.

There are also expectations of successes in Harrogate and rural Herefordshire.

Privately the party accepts that the real marker of success will not be the gains the Conservatives make - or even the councils they keep in their control - but how many gains the Liberal Democrats make.

"A lot of us have Lib Dems in second place and are looking over our shoulders," one senior Conservative told The Times.

"Our nightmare is that they start threatening us in the seats we hold."

Expected losses are Carlisle, Amber Valley, Torbay, Plymouth and Shepway - where shadow chancellor Michael Howard is the MP.

The party is not underestimating the scale of what is at stake.

"These elections are not an easy battleground for us," said a spokesman.