The publisher of Britain's Daily Mirror newspaper has been ordered to pay former England football star Paul Gascoigne and seven other victims of phone-hacking "unparallelled" awards totalling STG1.2 million.

Gascoigne, known as Gazza, was awarded STG188,250 following a privacy trial at the High Court in London earlier this year, while actress Sadie Frost, the ex-wife of actor Jude Law, received STG260,250.

Trinity Mirror, which owns the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and Sunday People national tabloids, said the basis for calculating damages was wrong and that it was considering an appeal.

But the company, which in February publicly apologised for the hacking of phone voicemails by its journalists, said it had once again increased its fund for compensating victims from STG12 million to STG16 million.

In his judgement, Judge George Anthony Mann said the victims had all suffered a "serious infringement of privacy" and the scale of the hacking was "very substantial indeed".

The ruling, which experts say represents a new bar in pay-outs in privacy cases heard in court, will now inform similar civil suits against the newspaper group.

Gascoigne's lawyer, Gerald Shamash, said his client was "relieved" at the judgement, which recognised the "sustained and intrusive impact" of stories published by the Mirror newspapers on his troubled client's life.

The newspaper group has already settled with a number of victims of hacking, as has the rival News UK, the publisher of The Sun and the now defunct News of the World tabloids owned by media mogul Rupert Murdoch.

Murdoch shut the News of the World in July 2011 following public revulsion that it had hacked the voicemail of a schoolgirl, Milly Dowler, who was later found murdered.

Although Thursday's judgement is the largest in a privacy case, Murdoch's News UK has paid out millions in out of court settlements.