The Press Complaints Commission (PCC), funded by the industry and whose members include serving editors, had been lambasted by politicians and celebrities who argued it was toothless.

Set up 21 years ago, it had not been expected to survive a wide-ranging public inquiry into press ethics ordered by Prime Minister David Cameron following the outcry over phone-hacking at the now defunct News of the World tabloid.

Following a meeting on Thursday, the PCC announced it would press ahead urgently with plans to close itself down and set up a transitional arrangement to prepare the way for a new regulator, although no timetable was disclosed.

When the phone-hacking scandal engulfed News International, the British newspaper arm of Murdoch’s News Corp. last July, the PCC was heavily condemned for having done nothing to address previous concerns.

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said the PCC was “busted” and needed to be replaced, while opposition Labour leader Ed Miliband called it a “toothless poodle.”

Despite protestations from some editors and publishers that the existing system could be reformed, the judge overseeing the public inquiry provoked by the scandal indicated in January he expected a complete overhaul.

“It won’t be good enough, in my present view ... just to think that one can tinker around the edges,” Lord Justice Brian Leveson said.

His inquiry had heard from a string of high-profile figures such as actor Hugh Grant and Harry Potter author JK Rowling who said the body was utterly ineffective in dealing with their complaints.

The PCC can order newspapers to publish apologies for errors, but it cannot issue fines, leading many who felt wronged to turn to the courts instead for redress.

PCC chairman David Hunt, a former government minister who took over last October, has said he wants the new watchdog to have more powers and to be able issue fines, and for there to be a standards arm as well as a complaints arm.

“What has not been agreed is the real detail for the long-term replacement of the PCC,” said Andrew Terry, media law expert at law firm Eversheds.

“Lord Hunt has promised plenty of consultation before putting in place a system that both has credibility and which is acceptable to the press - all that means this will be a very long-running drama.”

The British press has been self-regulating since 1953 but is under threat of being made subject to new laws amid political and public anger over some journalists’ behavior.

At the Leveson inquiry, the newspaper industry appealed to the government not to introduce draconian laws which could crush its free speech and ability to investigate wrongdoing.

“We’re in the last-chance saloon,” Lionel Barber, editor of the Financial Times said at an event to discuss the future of the press hosted by Reuters last year.

Leveson himself has said he believed the industry needed a regulatory body that was independent of government yet effective in meeting the needs of the public.