THE Westmorland Gazette won the community campaign accolade at last night's O2 Media Awards North West.

The newspaper was applauded for its Readers to the Rescue campaign which raised £40,000 to allow Kendal Mountain Rescue Team to kit out a new state-of-the-art mobile base. Money raised by readers has been used to buy an off road Ford Transit that has been fitted with satellite, mobile, broadband and digital radio technologies.

Three members of the mountain rescue team made the journey to Chester Racecourse to present the award to the Gazette's audience content editor, Mike Addison, and reporter Rachel Garnett at a glittering ceremony in front of 250 of the region's journalists.

The Gazette was also shortlisted for the weekly newspaper award which was won by the Liverpool-based Sunday Echo.

It was a successful night for Newsquest - the Gazette's parent company - which picked up five awards and was highly commended in several other categories too.

• The Warrington Guardian won the award for best online journalism

• Jon Colman of the Cumberland News and News & Star won best sport journalist

• Roger Lytollis of the Cumberland News and News & Star won best writer

• Taste Cumbria magazine won best specialist publication

• The Westmorland Gazette won the Community Campaign award

Also, the Cumberland News was highly commended in the weekly newspaper of the year award and The Mail, Barrow, was highly commended in the daily newspaper category. Rachael Oakden, editor of Taste, was highly commended in the best writer category.