Councils need to do more to help website visitors find and navigate around their news sections.

Half of local councils fail to link to their news sections from anywhere on their homepage, research by public relations platform provider Mynewsdesk found.

In addition, only one local authority provided a ‘responsively-designed newsroom for use on mobile devices’.

The report gave local authorities an average score of 23.75%, falling behind the world’s top 100 brands average score of 38% in last year’s benchmark report.

Chief executive officer of Mynewsdesk, Peter Ingman, said: ‘Local authorities need to work harder to engage with their citizens and the diverse range of audiences they serve.

‘It’s clear councils are investing in the tools needed to do this but simple things like updating their newsrooms regularly with interesting, useful content and connecting them to social media channels could possibly reduce calls to their contact centres and put less of a strain resources.’