A MATURE dating website is a real hit with staff at Dartford Council, who also prefer to read News Shopper's website for their local news.

Between April 2012 and April 2013, staff logged onto Mature Dating UK nearly 75,000 times.

The site, which tells visitors there are "thousands of mature ladies waiting for you," was more popular than The Telegraph and the Kent Messenger’s website Kent Online, which clocked 65,000 hits.

Meanwhile, staff logged onto newsshopper.co.uk more than 100,000 times.

Worryingly for Dartford FC fans, their official website failed to make the top 500 most-popular websites, whereas 24,726 visits were made to Southend United’s.

Dartford Council leader and Darts FC director Councillor Jeremy Kite said: "I’m dumbfounded. It’s inexplicable.

"Maybe someone lives there or they’re checking out the new signings for Dartford."

The most popular website was Google, with more than four million hits.

The council’s own website pulled in the second highest number of hits with 2.3 million while Facebook was also popular, with more than 720,000 visits.

A council spokeswoman said: "Dartford Council monitors its internet usage and staff can browse the internet during their breaks."