ONE of the key responsibilities of any local newspaper is to go into battle on behalf of its readers.

This week is Local Newspaper Week, when we celebrate the important roles of community newspapers.

The Lancashire Telegraph regularly launches campaigns with a range of objectives.

These can include fighting injustice and exposing wrong-doing, tackling problems in the community, and pushing for social change, or simply trying to raise funds, or awareness, for a good cause.

Our Raise the Roof appeal for East Lancashire Hospice is just the latest.

The aim is to raise £125,000 for the charity to build a new roof over its inpatients unit, after the old roof fell into disrepair.

In less than two months the campaign has raised £25,000 – a fifth of the total target.

Sharon Crymble, hospice fundraising manager, said: “The Lancashire Telegraph and the Raise the Roof campaign has helped us to reach people we couldn’t otherwise reach, to connect with a wider audience, and to share our message.

The profile the paper has given to the hospice has been invaluable. Not only because it is helping us with the appeal, but because it is also telling people about our services.”

Ongoing drives include the Lancashire Telegraph’s Consequences, Keep Them Safe, and Potholes campaigns.

Consequences was set up in the wake of 24-year-old Blackburn man Adam Rogers’ death, following a single-punch assault.

It aims to raise awareness of the consequences of alcohol-fuelled violence.

Keep Them Safe aims to highlight child sexual exploitation and prevent further cases.

And the Potholes campaign intends to address the terrible state of East Lancashire roads.

Previous campaigns include the East Lancashire SuperScan Appeal, launched in 1997, which raised almost £900,000 for an MRI scanner for the old Blackburn Infirmary, and the Lifeline Appeal, started in 1992, which raised £250,000 to equip ambulances.

And it was partly thanks to the Lancashire Telegraph’s campaign 30 years ago that the people of East Lancashire raised £700,000 to build East Lancashire Hospice, in Park Lee, Blackburn, enabling it to open in 1984.