Olympics chiefs have been urged to give more media passes to local and regional newspapers for the 2012 London Games.

It follows a campaign launched by editors of Newsquest titles including the Ilkley Gazette and Wharfedale and Aireborough Observer, who have written to MPs seeking support. Ilkley MP Kris Hopkins warned that so far only a small number of local newspapers have been guaranteed passes for the 16 days of competition, leaving hundreds of titles excluded.

Speaking at a fringe meeting at the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester, he challenged the chief executive of the London Olympic Games Organising Committee (LOGOC), Paul Deighton, to do more to ensure non-national papers are allowed access to the events. Mr Hopkins has also written to the chairman of LOGOC Lord Coe.

He said: “While I appreciate that demand for media accreditation for the London Olympics is inevitably bound to outstrip supply, I believe that every possible effort must be made to ensure that local newspapers can as far as possible cover the events from their own perspective.

“As one highly-respected and long-serving local editor recently said to me, the local press are often as interested in the competitor who finishes sixth as they are in the gold medallist if that person comes from their circulation areas.

“However, it will be virtually impossible for them to provide any meaningful coverage without adequate media accreditation.

“Mr Deighton promised to pick this matter up directly with Lord Coe, the British Olympic Association and the International Olympic Committee, and I am grateful to him for that.”

Ilkley Gazette and Wharfedale Observer editor Malcolm Hoddy, who asked Mr Hopkins to raise the issue said: “We believe that the British Olympic Association can provide more media accreditations to the regional and local press. We have quite a number of medal prospects in our circulation area such as the Brownlee brothers and Lizzie Armistead.

“We appreciate that this is also a world event and that not all applications can expect to be successful, but feel that we have been virtually ignored. All we ask as the press representatives of the host country is that we get a fair allocation. Newsquest, our parent company, reaches 9.5 million readers a week with its newspapers, far outstripping the penetration of the national press. Our online audience is also in the millions.”