Northern Ireland daily the Belfast Telegraph has seen a circulation decline of 11.7pc after previously appearing to have steadied its sales figures.

Sales at the province’s biggest selling regional daily plummeted in the six months from July to December last year.

The latest ABC figures for Ireland, which have been published today, show the average circulation for the paper was 58,491 – compared to 67,353 six months ago.

Its 11.7pc fall in circulation compared to December 2009 comes after the paper appeared to be bucking the downward trend with a decrease of just 1pc for the period to June last year.

At the other regional daily titles, the Irish News had a decline of 3.2pc while the News Letter saw a fall of 3.6pc.

For the Sunday titles, the Belfast Telegraph’s sister paper the Sunday Life saw its sales decline by 9.4pc, while the Sunday Journal’s circulation only fell by 0.7pc.

The Tyrone Herald saw the largest increase of the fully paid-for weeklies at 6.8pc, while the Tyrone Times saw sales rise 1.3pc, as did the Fermanagh Herald, and the North Belfast News had an increase of 5.5pc.

Paid-for weeklies with the biggest falls in circulation were Ads for Free at 27.4pc and the Newtownards Spectator with a decline of 17.3pc, taking it to an average circulation of just 698.