It beat off strong competition from sister-publication the Shropshire Star and from Reach plc newspapers, Birmingham Mail, Sunday Mercury and The Sentinel, with the judges acknowledging its very high story count, balance of features and hard news, good sports section and exclusive stories.

“There’s an awful lot in it – and that’s a great selling point,” said chairman of the judges, Laurie Upshon. He added: “With more than 220 entries, these awards really do reflect the wonderfully diverse region we serve. There were excellent submissions from across theregion which made the judges’ jobs extremely difficult, but we weredelighted by the quality of work submitted.”

The awards, held at Villa Park to recognise the achievements of the region’s journalists, photographers, broadcasters and bloggers, also saw last year’s winners Mark Gough, ITV News Central; Adrian Goldberg, Kick in the Grass Productions/BBC and Tim Thursfield, Express & Star, retaining their awards.

Mark was named as Television Journalist of the Year alongside ITV colleague Phil Brewster while also being named as Business Journalist of the Year. Adrian retained his Radio Journalist of the Year award in addition to walking away with the Blogger of the Year trophy, with Tim Thursfield again winning the Tony Flanagan Photographer of the Year accolade.

The Birmingham Mail/Birmingham Live team secured two major awards, winning the inaugural Team of the Year for its coverage of Aston Villa’s Championship Play-Off Final and also the Storyof the Year award for its coverage of protests outside schools over LGBT equality teaching, while Zoe Chamberlain won News Reporter of the Year (Daily).

Another new category, for the PR agency campaign generating the most positive publicity, went to Story Comms’ initiative to publicise the UK’s most landlocked wave park, in Birmingham.