WORLD NEWS MEDIA DIRECTORY
Explore this media outlet and visit its official website.
The Times & Star — formally the West Cumberland Times & Star — is a weekly newspaper serving Workington, Allerdale and west Cumbria in the north-west of England. Published in print each week and online at timesandstar.co.uk, it is the dedicated local paper for one of Cumbria's great industrial towns, covering local news, sport, community life and events across Workington and the surrounding former coal and steel communities. Its roots stretch back through two distinct newspaper lineages to the nineteenth century, and it is owned by Newsquest Media Group, having passed from the family-owned CN Group to Newsquest in 2018.
Workington is a town built on iron and steel: for more than a century its blast furnaces and steelworks dominated the Cumbrian coast, and the town's working-class identity — expressed most famously through its passion for rugby league — was forged in the mills and pits. The closure of the steelworks in the twentieth century was a trauma the town is still processing, and the Times & Star has been the chronicler of that entire arc: boom, decline, and the long effort at regeneration. Few local papers in Britain have a deeper connection to the industrial story of their town.
The modern Times & Star descends from two historic Cumbrian newspapers. The West Cumberland Times was first published in Cockermouth in 1874, serving the towns and villages of west Cumberland through the great age of Victorian industry. Surviving archive records trace its publication from March 1874 into the twentieth century, with thousands of issues preserved in newspaper archives.
The second lineage began in Workington itself with the Evening Star, a daily newspaper first published on 20 November 1926 by the Workington Star company. The Evening Star became the Cumberland Evening Star and Mail in 1935, publishing continuously until 1967, when it ceased and was incorporated with the Cumberland Evening News to form the Cumberland Evening News & Star. The merger of these traditions — the weekly Times of Cockermouth and the daily Star of Workington — eventually produced the West Cumberland Times & Star, the weekly title that serves the area today.
For most of the late twentieth century and into the twenty-first, the Times & Star was published by the CN Group — Cumbrian Newspapers — the family-owned publisher controlled for four generations by the Burgess family. CN was one of Britain's last great independent regional publishers, its portfolio including the Carlisle News & Star, the Cumberland News, the Whitehaven News, the Hexham Courant, the Barrow-based Evening Mail and a stable of magazines.
Under CN ownership the Times & Star was produced as part of a west Cumbria operation alongside its sister title the Whitehaven News. The two papers topped the national charts for digital growth among regional weeklies: in Audit Bureau of Circulations figures for the first half of 2017, the Times & Star recorded a 143.1 per cent year-on-year rise in daily average unique browsers, second only to the Whitehaven News's 162.7 per cent. In 2016, CN announced plans to centralise its west Cumbria editorial operations, merging the staff of the Times & Star, the Whitehaven News and the News & Star West into a single team under one editor — a cost-saving measure that kept all titles and offices operating.
In March 2018, the CN Group was sold to Newsquest Media Group, ending four generations of Burgess family ownership. The sale was completed on 12 March, with chairman Robin Burgess saying the decision was taken to protect the long-term future of the group, its staff and its pensioners in the face of intensifying digital competition. The Times & Star passed to Newsquest along with the rest of the CN portfolio.
After the takeover, Newsquest closed the printing press at the former CN headquarters, Newspaper House in Carlisle, moving production to Glasgow — a decision that put more than 30 print jobs at risk. The Times & Star is now printed in Glasgow alongside Newsquest's Scottish titles. The paper's editorial operation was reorganised under Newsquest Cumbria, and the former Newspaper House site was eventually sold and demolished, an event former staff marked as the end of an era in early 2025.
The paper serves Workington itself — Cumbria's largest town on the west coast — along with Maryport, Cockermouth, Aspatria, Silloth and the villages of the former Allerdale district, as well as reporting on west Cumbrian issues more broadly. Its news agenda is shaped by the area's post-industrial character: regeneration schemes for Workington town centre and the historic harbour, the future of the former steelworks sites, transport infrastructure on a peripheral coast, and the perennial question of how to bring new jobs and investment to the area.
Council coverage is a staple. The paper reports on Cumberland Council, the unitary authority created in 2023 from the merger of Allerdale, Copeland and Carlisle, as well as on Workington Town Council and the area's parish councils. Planning applications, economic development initiatives and public-service provision all feature prominently, alongside court reporting and community safety news.
If one subject defines the Times & Star, it is rugby league. Workington Town — "Town" — is the professional club at the heart of the community, and the paper's coverage of its fortunes in the Championship and League One is followed with an intensity few local sports beats can match. Match reports, previews, transfer news, interviews and fan debate fill the sports pages through the season, and the club's cup runs and derby clashes with Whitehaven are among the biggest stories of the sporting year.
The amateur game is equally woven into the paper's coverage, with local clubs across Allerdale producing players and pride in equal measure. Beyond rugby league, the paper covers Workington AFC — the town's non-league football club, known as the Reds — along with cricket, golf, athletics, junior sport and school competitions. In a town where sporting identity is a core part of civic identity, the Times & Star's sports coverage is essential reading.
The defining civic story of modern Workington is regeneration. The closure of the steelworks left vast tracts of derelict industrial land and a hole in the town's economy and self-image; the decades since have seen successive efforts to reinvent the town, from the redevelopment of the harbour and town centre to ambitious schemes for the former industrial sites. The Times & Star has reported on every twist of that story: the plans announced, the funding secured and lost, the controversies over what should replace the works, and the slow, uneven progress of renewal.
The paper has given its readers a voice in the debate — famously involving them directly, as when readers chose the names for new streets in the town centre redevelopment. Its reporting on major employers, infrastructure projects and the area's economic strategy provides the accountability that regeneration spending demands, and its celebration of new businesses, community projects and civic achievements records the town's resilience.
The Times & Star publishes online at timesandstar.co.uk, where news, sport and features appear continuously between print editions. The website was an early digital success story among regional weeklies, with its 143.1 per cent year-on-year growth in unique browsers in the first half of 2017 placing it second nationally among weekly newspaper sites. The site carries breaking news, photo galleries, video content and reader interaction through comments and social media.
Like its sister titles, the paper uses its digital platforms to reach readers beyond the traditional print audience — including the Cumbrian diaspora and former residents who follow the town's news from afar. Public notices from the paper are published through the national public notice portal, continuing the title's historic function as a medium for official announcements.
Across its various incarnations, the Times & Star and its predecessor titles have recorded more than 150 years of west Cumbrian life: the rise of the iron and steel industry, the world wars, the nationalisation and decline of the works, the miners' and steelworkers' struggles, and the town's search for a new identity. The archives of the West Cumberland Times and the Evening Star, preserved in libraries and record offices, are among the richest sources for the industrial and social history of the Cumbrian coast.
Today the paper continues its essential work: holding Cumberland Council and other institutions to account, celebrating the achievements of Workington's people, campaigning on the issues that matter to the town, and providing the shared weekly narrative of a community that has endured profound economic change. For Workington and Allerdale, the Times & Star remains what it has always been — the town's own paper, telling the town's own story.
See the official website for current coverage.
Online News
Bengaluru, Karnataka, India
English
Overview Citizen Matters is a Bengaluru-based nonprofit civic journalism platform that reports on Indian cities from the citizen's perspective. Launched in 2008, it covers urban governance, environment, public…
→Use Visit official website. The publisher controls access, subscriptions, schedules and availability.
No. A listing helps identify a source. It is not an endorsement or a guarantee of its reporting.
