Fresh elections for the Northern Ireland assembly have been put back to the new year amid claims that the EU and the UK are close to agreement on some elements of the controversial Brexit arrangements that have caused a Democratic Unionist party (DUP) boycott of Stormont. The Northern Ireland secretary, Chris Heaton-Harris, said he had listened to concerns about the impact and cost of an election and confirmed there would be no elections before Christmas. “I can now confirm that no assembly election will take place in December, or ahead of the festive season. Current legislation requires me to name a date for an election to take place within 12 weeks of 28 October, and next week I will make a statement in parliament to lay out my next steps.” Under the law, a fresh election must be called within 12 weeks of the 28 October deadline for power-sharing to be restored after the May election. With the shortest campaign period expected to be seven weeks, that gives Heaton-Harris up to 8 December to name a date. It is understood that the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office had pushed for the delay, to give talks with the EU over the Northern Ireland protocol a chance. A senior government source said technical discussions on customs and controls for goods and produce going from Great Britain to Northern Ireland were “nearly there” but more time was needed on the detail of tricky subjects such as state aid and the role of the European court of justice (ECJ). Steve Baker, the Northern Ireland minister and former head of the European Research Group, has recently said the grouping of Tory Eurosceptic MPs still had the power to “implode” the Conservative party unless the UK’s red lines on the ECJ were met. He believed the group also had the backing of many of the 2019 “red wall” constituency Tories. “We’ve all got our red lines. The EU, of course would prefer that we stopped the progress of the NI protocol bill. We need to talk about the jurisdiction of the ECJ. But we need to really not emphasise those at the moment. [Instead] get into the negotiation, solve the technical problems and then towards the end we’ll deal with our red lines,” he told Sky News recently. Sources say the UK is looking to change the Northern Ireland protocol to include a dispute mechanism from the separate withdrawal agreement that mandates a political process before the ECJ, as the first step in any dispute. An alternative, government sources argue, is the use of a dispute mechanism in the trade and cooperation agreement, with no role for the ECJ. That might satisfy the DUP but would not be acceptable to the EU. Sinn Féin criticised the election delay as a sign of “more dithering and indecision … and a continuation of the Tory chaos in London that is now paralysing our politics”. The party has emerged as the largest in the May elections but was unable to lead the executive because of the DUP boycott in protest at the continuation of the protocol. The DUP leader, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, has called for a “razor-sharp focus on getting a solution, whether by negotiation or legislation” to the protocol. “There is no solid basis for a fully functioning Stormont until [the protocol] is replaced with arrangements that unionists can support,” he said. The Ulster Unionist party leader, Doug Beattie, who on Thursday called for article 16 of the protocol to be triggered, welcomed the delay. “We now have an opportunity to create time and space to resolve matters” that are holding up the restoration of power sharing.”