HERALD owner Sir Ray Tindle has handed over control of the newspaper company he started 70 years ago to his son, Owen.

Sir Ray started the company with £300 demob money given to him after serving during the Second Word War. He built it up to become the UK’s 10th largest local newspaper publisher with 220 titles.

In recent years, Tindle Newspapers has been one of the few local newspaper publishers to avoid compulsory redundancies. It instead responded to the recession by launching more local titles staffed out of existing resources.

Sir Ray made his handover announcement at the Tindle Top Management Conference at the Oxon Hoath Retreat and Conference Centre in Kent, which is run by his son.

Sir Ray will continued to be involved as president.

He said: “I must apologise for my absence recently through a series of illnesses and I must sincerely thank all the many people who have pulled me through and all those marvellous people who have pulled our papers through these recent troubled times.

“I would like to thank my wife, Beryl. She has been a rock upon which I have leaned on heavily for months now.

“I also thank my son, Owen, and say how pleased I am that as of now Owen becomes chairman of the Tindle Group. Thank you, Owen, for all you and your colleagues have done these last months and years.

“I would also like to take this opportunity of thanking Wendy Craig, vice-chairman, and the managing directors of the various regions."

Sir Ray continued: “Let me just say a word about the future of our industry. I see a greater need for our local press now than I have ever seen in my 80 or so years connected with this business. Yes, local papers will survive. Local news in depth is what people need.

"Names, faces and places. There is no doubt about it, sufficient demand is still there. Local detailed news is in a category of its own. It has survived many years, it will live forever.”

Owen Tindle said: "It is a great honour to be passed the baton of the family company which I will carry forward for many years to come, I’m sure. I’m so glad that you are staying on as president and, more importantly, as our esteemed guru.

“Yours is a hard act to follow, an impossible act to follow, for you have created and built this group into one of the finest independent local newspaper groups in the country. And you yourself must be the most accomplished and respected local newspaperman in the entire industry.

“No-one else has created and maintained such a successful and entirely family-owned group, remained in profit for over 40 years without incurring one penny of debt to anyone. No-one else has remained so steadfast for so many decades through all the hard times and against such an array of adversaries, and carried themselves with such dignity, integrity and good humour.

“Over the years your advice has been sought by industry chiefs, senior parliamentary ministers and prime ministers.

“No-one else in the industry has received such a succession of high honours from OBE to CBE to Knight of the Realm."

Owen continued: “We will have to continually re-appraise and re-align ourselves with the realities of the times and the reduced revenues that we are all experiencing, but we will go forward into the new era of local media keeping things beautifully small and beautifully local.”