HERE at the Gazette we’re more used to writing the headlines than making them... but we have a reason to celebrate.

Your local paper has been named the best performing regional daily in England.

ABC, the Audit Bureau of Circulations, independently verifies and reports on media performance across Britain.

The Gazette was the top performer in England in the first six months of 2017.

It is a massive achievement in an increasingly challenging industry.

A huge team effort goes into the Gazette’s success with editorial, advertising, sales and administrative staff all playing a key role. And not forgetting the paper boys.

We are the first to admit if we don’t always get it right.

But we are hugely proud of our paper and do our best to find stories that interest, inform and entertain every day as well as providing great value for money with daily offers and money savers.

We try our best to fight for our readers and town, as our Cassie’s Law and Save our Cancer Services campaigns have shown in recent years.

We also take our job of holding authority to account seriously to make sure taxpayers’ are getting the best deal.

Our coverage of the local sports scene is second to none.

We have a series of great promotions in the run up to Christmas, including the Win £100 Right up your Street giveaway.

We hope the figures are a vote of confidence from you, our readers, in the papers we are producing.

It’s not all good news, of course. The industry has undergone massive changes over the last two decades.

The unstable state of the economy has damaged sales and advertising revenues.

The behaviour of some national newspapers and the subsequent Leveson inquiry has affected confidence in the press.

One of the biggest challenges we face is from news available for free on the internet.

Fewer people are picking up their local paper, happy to get news from Facebook or websites simply chasing “hits”.

We were part of the Newspaper Society’s Fighting Fake News campaign this year to show local papers are the most reliable source of news.

Many towns and cities in the UK no longer have a daily paper.

The latest casualty was the Oldham Chronicle, which closed after 163 years.

The Gazette’s table-topping performance in January to June this year saw its circulation fall 3.5 per cent, compared to the same period in 2016.

The industry average is about 10 per cent down.

To say it is a tough time for local papers is an understatement, so I thank you wholeheartedly for your support.

While there is an appetite for local news we will be doing our utmost.

One thing’s for sure - you won’t find a more passionate team of journalists anywhere in the country than here at the Gazette.