The Loughborough Echo has claimed success in a three-year campaign to brighten up the town after it won an East Midlands in Bloom gold medal.
The campaign was launched in response to a series of complaints about the state of the town’s verges and flowerbeds made by Echo readers.
Echo editor Andy Rush said: “We’d been carrying lots of complaint stories and it would have been the easiest thing in the world to splash a banner headline and pose the question to the authorities: ‘What are you going to do about it?’ But we decided to do something more positive…
“We got a Bloom Board together made up of all the key players in the town and haven’t looked back since.”
Rush said that the campaign was an example of the Big Society “before it was even heard of”.
Email pged@pressgazette.co.uk to point out mistakes, provide story tips or send in a letter for publication on our "Letters Page" blog