A leading regional publisher has been rapped by advertising watchdogs over an advert for an online jobs board service.

The Newsquest-owned Lancashire Telegraph and Citizen Series of newspapers launched northwestjobsonline.co.uk service last October with a series of in-paper ads.

They stated: “northwestjobsonline.co.uk is a new recruitment service from the Lancashire Telegraph, Citizen Series and the North West’s leading newspapers. It’s where the North West’s top employers will shortly go to headhunt.”

But the wording was challenged over whether it constituted a breach of the Advertising Standards Authority code, because it did not make clear that northwestjobsonline.co.uk was an employment agency.

The ASA has today revealed that it has upheld the complaint and posted the adjudication on its website.

It said an employment agency was defined by law as an organisation providing services, whether by the provision of information or otherwise, for the purpose of finding persons employment, and that by that definition northwestjobsonline.co.uk was an employment agency.

Newsquest argued that the 1974 Act of Parliament which regulates employment agencies was passed long before the era of internet job boards and was never meant to apply to them.

A recent government consultation has led to the drawing up of new rules due to come into force in October which will remove the requirement on advertisers to state whether they are acting as employment agencies.

However the ASA ruled: “We considered that, until such time that it was made law and the Committee of Advertising Practice Code was amended to reflect such changes to the law, the ad had to be assessed under the CAP Code as drafted at the time the ad appeared.”

It concluded: “The ad must not appear again in its current form. We told Newsquest to ensure that they made clear in the body copy of the ad that they operated as an employment agency.”

Northwestjobsonline.co.uk has since been taken down and replaced by newspaper-branded jobs boards for each of the titles.