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The DUP is "pushing back hard" against an attempt to win its approval for a potential Irish border backstop compromise already signalled by Theresa May, Sky News sources say.

Sky News has established that informal sounding out with the DUP to accept some increased forms of checks "in the Irish Sea" between Northern Ireland and Great Britain is occurring - including at the margins of Conservative Conference.

A DUP delegation including leader Arlene Foster arrived in Birmingham on Monday.

A DUP source said: "The PM understands our red line. No new border in the Irish Sea. Respect the economic and constitutional integrity of the UK."

A separate source said "a number of different hybrid models" are being floated, all of which provide for UK-wide alignment with relevant EU customs union rules.

It will also provide for Northern Ireland's specific regulatory alignment with the Single Market and technological checks, as well as extra physical checks on food and agriculture on UK trade going into ports in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

The proposals are designed to both create some freedom for the UK to start external trade negotiations, but also maintain the trading conditions for an open border in Ireland.

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The government is trying to meet a deadline imposed at the Salzburg summit of coming up with a detailed proposed backstop by the time of the October EU Summit.

This is in order to confirm with the EU27 the date of a special November summit to sign a wider withdrawal deal.

At Salzburg the PM had privately suggested to the Irish leader Leo Varadkar that this compromise plan could not be ready this month, but this date was insisted upon by the EU27 led by French President Emmanuel Macron.

The PM signalled at her post-Salzburg Downing Street statement that new east-west Irish Sea regulatory checks of some sort could occur as part of the backstop, if they were approved by the currently-suspended Stormont assembly.

A number of Cabinet ministers have reiterated publicly and privately that any backstop that carved Northern Ireland into a separate customs territory from the rest of the United Kingdom would be unacceptable to their party, as it would to the DUP.

But regulatory checks across the Irish Sea, particularly in regard to food and agriculture are being contemplated, and do, to a small extent, already occur, for example, on cattle.

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One option is one-way checks to only check produce going from Great Britain to Northern Ireland, enabling the DUP to say that the access of its produce to UK markets would remain free and unimpeded.

Michel Barnier's team have already indicated that many checks on customs, VAT and product standards could take place technologically, but that food and agriculture trade would need physical checks.

Steve Baker, the ex-Brexit minister who resigned over the Chequers deal, told Sky News: "I’d be really astonished if the UK is signing up to that.

"I can't imagine the DUP would stand for it before you even begin to think what Tory Eurosceptics would think.

"So a border in the Irish Sea is the one thing I think the DUP would bring down the government."