Paul Dacre’s pay packet has increased by more than 50% to almost £2.5m , bolstering his status as Britain’s best-paid newspaper editor.

The editor-in-chief of the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday and Mail Online has received £1.45m in salary in 2017 and £68,000 in taxable benefits.

The benefits include a company car with a taxable value of almost £34,000 and a vehicle and fuel allowance of more than £25,000.

The 69-year old, who is on a 12-month rolling contract with the parent company, Daily Mail & General Trust, was awarded an £856,000 payout as part of the company’s long-term investment plan (LTIP).

Dacre was moved from DMGT’s annual bonus scheme to the LTIP in 2015 to make his remuneration “more directly linked to the overall success of the business”. 

His total remuneration of £2.37m – up 56% on £1.5m in 2016 when he had yet to receive his first LTIP payout – follows a 20% slump in DMGT’s share price after the company reported a sharp drop in annual profits and warned of a tough year ahead. 

Viscount Rothermere, the chairman of DMGT, said in the company’s annual report that Dacre’s LTIP payout had been approved for Dacre hitting two main targets – “ensuring the financial stability of the Mail titles” and “investing in strong brands of digital consumer media, particularly Mail Online”.

Rothermere said: “We have made good progress against these priorities and the [remuneration] committee has determined that the award should vest in full.”

DMGT reported last month that combined revenues for the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday and Mail Online were £574m in the year to the end of September, boosted by increases in print cover prices. The website contributed £119m and is expected to make an annual profit in 2018. The Mail businesses made an operating profit of £71m.

The company said print advertising revenues fell by 5% and digital advertising grew by 18%.

Dacre, who joined the group in 1979 as US bureau chief, has accrued a pension pot that pays out £708,000 a year. DMGT no longer makes any contributions towards his pension.

This year the Daily Mail was named newspaper of the year at the annual Press Awards, with judges citing its “strong and provocative voice”.

Last month the columnist Katie Hopkins left Mail Online by “mutual consent”after a string of complaints about her articles.

One of her most controversial pieces involved comparing African migrants crossing the Mediterranean to “cockroaches” and calling for gunboats to prevent migrants from reaching their destination. Her weekly show on the radio station LBC was stopped in May after Hopkins posted a tweet about the Manchester Arena attack that called for a “final solution” for Muslims in Britain.

This year DMGT looked at a potential sale of the free title Metro, which is distributed across the UK. Potential buyers for the title, which is valued at up to £40m, include Evgeny Lebedev, the owner of London’s Evening Standard.

Paul Zwillenberg, a close friend of Rothermere and who started as chief executive of DMGT last summer, has said there are “no sacred cows” as he continues to evaluate assets that could be sold off. However, it is understood that Rothermere has stepped back from a sale of Metro at this stage.

The vast majority of DMGT’s profits and revenues come from its business publishing assets, which include the largest stake in ZPG, the company behind the property website Zoopla and the price comparison site uSwitch.

Overall, DMGT posted a 13% fall in adjusted profits before tax to £226m for the year to the end of September. Revenues were also down 13%,to £1.66bn.

The company made a statutory loss before tax of £112m as it took a hit from writedowns totalling £206m. It wrote down the value of three investments – the energy information business Genscape and the property information companies Xceligent and SiteCompli.