A regional publisher’s hyperlocal news service was given a front page plug after a daily newspaper splashed on its investigation.

Reach plc’s In Your Area site ran an nationwide data probe to find the best and worst connected places on each of its titles’ patches.

Stories across the group between Sunday and Tuesday (11), and have been read more than 300,000 times online.

The coverage included an interactive widget allowing anyone to put their postcode in to see how well or poorly connected their area is, and allowed them to sign up to In Your Area too.

The investigation also proved a hit in print, with titles including the Bristol Post splashing on the findings on Monday and featuring In Your Area’s logo on the front page, pictured above.

Editor-in-chief for In Your Area and Reach Regionals digital network Ed Walker told HTFP: “It was great to see our titles, journalists and newsrooms get behind this to tell stories about the best and worst connected places in England and Wales.

“There’s some fantastic colour pieces from journalists who visited towns, villages and places which sometimes are off the radar.”

Claire Miller, editor at Reach’s data unit, added: “Being able to easily get to schools, health services, food shops and other essential places is key for day-to-day life, and the interactive and analysis helps to make government figures on journey times accessible to those who live in these communities.

“It does this by bringing together lots of data for small neighbourhoods across England and Wales into a simple, easy to understand format that works responsively to tailor the information to the person’s location.

“In Wales, the figures on journey times are used to capture deprivation resulting from people’s inability to access a range of essential everyday services – so understanding the impacts of poor connections, can potentially help communities better tackle the issues.

“These figures also highlight how poor public transport is in some parts of the country, where a trip that could take less than an hour in the car becomes a long trek by bus and train – leaving those with a car no option but to drive, and those without, isolated.”