EastLondonlines can reveal that owners Northcliffe Media have decided to change rules governing the adverts it accepts from January 1 following discussions with the Metropolitan Police.

Advertisements for massage parlours, saunas and escorts have featured prominently under ‘adult services’ in its small advertisements section. Last year, the newspaper was criticized after running a front-page story exposing a brothel that was advertised on page 52 of the same issue.

A statement today from Northcliffe, which is a subsidiary of the Daily Mail and General Trust, also owners of the Daily Mail, said: “The Croydon Advertiser has always taken its obligation to act within current legislation seriously.”

A spokesperson for Northcliffe said it could not comment further, but police sources said the group had agreed to drop massage and escort adverts from its pages.

The Croydon Community Against Trafficking said it was “encouraged” by the move but were waiting to see changes on paper. The group claims such adverts are often tied to sex slavery.

CCAT Chairman Peter Cox said: “The proof that the Advertiser is making a genuine moral change in policy can only be assessed by what actually happens in the newspaper.”

“These ads fuel the demand for cheap, unhealthy sex, often provided by women who are victims of trafficking.”

Croydon had the third highest number of prostitution sites among all London boroughs in 2003, according to research by women’s charity Eaves.

CCAT had backed former MP Andrew Pelling in calling on Croydon Council to boycott the Advertiser until it dropped all such notices. Pelling first raised the issue at a council meeting on December 5.

But Pelling, a former London Assembly member who stood as an independent in the 2010 general election after being suspended from the Conservative Party, claimed that until now the Advertiser has “consistently refused” to drop “tawdry adverts”.

CCAT Chairman Peter Cox said: “Whilst CCAT is encouraged by what might be a new approach, the proof that the Advertiser is making a genuine moral change in policy can only be assessed by what actually happens in the newspaper.”

“These ads fuel the demand for cheap, unhealthy sex, often provided by women who are victims of trafficking.”

CCAT has previously passed information to police about establishments that advertise in the newspaper.

Some were regular fixtures in its pages, according to the group’s database.

CCAT members pose as customers to investigate establishments and pass information to police. The group says it has identified around fifty such places still operating in the borough, by phoning and asking about services.

Newsquest Media, which owns rival paper The Croydon Guardian, banned all such adverts last year in what Cox called “a very brave decision.”

Senior police warned London newspapers last November that many adverts for ‘adult services’ could be fronts for criminal networks, saying they could be criminally liable unless they took steps to regulate the notices.

Under the Sexual Offences Act 2003, publications can be prosecuted if they run adverts for illegal businesses whose source they could reasonably have suspected.

Detective Chief Superintendent Richard Martin wrote: “Advertising in newspapers can play a key role in facilitating the exploitation of trafficked victims.

“Advertisements that offer multi-national or young women, or which are sexually suggestive in tone, are often the type found to be linked…to the presence of trafficked women.”

Detective Inspector Kevin Hyland of the SCD9 Human Exploitation unit said such advertising was extremely common.

He said: “We did a test last year where we phoned a hundred adverts – and of those hundred adverts, one hundred were for illegal premises.”

He claimed adverts for brothels were often paid for in person with large sums of cash in what he described as “very blatantly money laundering”.

But he said there had been a “significant reduction” in advertising for brothels since the police letter last year.

Police will decide in the new year whether to take action against publications that still allow the adverts.

Councillors in neighbouring Sutton condemned massage parlour adverts in October, while the Sutton Guardian banned them from its classified section.