The National Readership Survey (NRS) is to collect data for all of Britain’s regional newspapers from April, it was announced today.

Until now, publishers have relied on the Joint Industry Committee for Regional Media Research (JICREG) to gather information about their readers.

But the two bodies have now agreed to work in partnership, meaning regional titles will be included in the 36,000 face-to-face interviews that NRS carries out every year.

Specially customised questions will be included for each region to enable readership estimates specific to individual areas to be created.

Mike Ironside, chief executive of NRS commented:  “This is another step forward for the NRS in traditional media and shows how trusted our data collection techniques have become within the industry.”

Keith Donaldson, chief executive of JICREG said: “This is a bold move that really demonstrates the commitment by local media owners to prove accountability through high quality regional readership data.”

Jim Jarrett, business director at media agency Mindshare added: “This is a really significant development for the regional press, enabling campaigns to be planned with greater confidence and to the benefit of all sides of the industry.

“JICREG has always provided much-needed insight into the readership of regional publications and the new partnership with NRS is only going to strengthen that insight while providing an industry-standard dataset that is conducted to the highest technical standards.”