Newsquest has merged the St Albans Observer with its siter paper, the St Albans Review.

The group will no longer publish the paid-for Observer – which launched in 1985 – and says it has instead incorporated it into its free title, which relaunched with a new look this week.

Editor Martin Buhagiar, who joined the group in February, said the Review was now delivered to more homes than any other newspaper in the district.

He told HoldtheFrontPage: “The idea was to merge both titles to provide a bigger and better paper.

“The Review now has forty to fifty per cent more news pages and another advantage is that we are out first, before our rivals.”

He added: “We all pulled together to get the paper finished on Tuesday following the Bank Holiday Monday and are really pleased with the result.

“It looks fantastic and we have already received a positive feedback from our readers.”

The St Albans Observer had an average weekly circulation of 2,838, and was published every Thursday.

The St Albans Review is delivered free to almost 50,000 homes each Wednesday.

Both newspapers were produced by the same team, which also produce the Welwyn and Hatfield Review.

Martin said the team had also been kept busy this week producing a tourism micro-site for www.stalbansreview.co.uk.