ITV called out by Ofcom for breaking huge competition rules meaning 41,000 entrants had no chance of winning

ITV has been investigated by TV watchdog Ofcom for breaking huge competition rules, meaning 41,000 This Morning and Good Morning Britain viewers entered with no chance of winning.

The competitors were also run on more ITV shows like Lorraine, Loose Women, Ant and Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway, La Vuelta and X Factor: The Band.

However, it was found that viewers who made postal entries were not included in the competition count up, meaning there was no chance they could win, breaking the Ofcom fair competition rule.

"Our investigation found that people entered these competitions by post were excluded from the draw, with no chance of winning," an Ofcom spokesperson explained.

"ITV failed to follow proper procedures and this led to a clear breach of our rules, which require all broadcast competitions to be conducted fairly.

"In all cases, some viewers who participated using the postal entry route had no chance of being selected to win the competition."

ITV has responded to the findings with a statement explaining that they are trying to change their competition processes so that viewers can enter via the post for free in future.

"The integrity of all viewer competitions run by ITV is an absolute priority for us, therefore any related error is taken very seriously and is a matter of sincere regret.

"Since discovering the errors relating to six competitions, ITV has implemented new measures for processing free postal entries.

"We note that Ofcom acknowledges that these were unintentional human errors that affected some free postal entries and a relatively small number of competitions compared to the number we operate overall and that ITV acted immediately and proactively in addressing and reporting the matter and taking action to avoid recurrence."