Archant increased its furlough claim in February to become the top-claiming UK media publisher using the Government scheme supporting jobs during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The regional publisher claimed somewhere between £250,001 and £500,000 from the Government in February – up from the £50,000 to £100,000 band in December and £100,001 to £250,000 in January.
The UK was under a strict lockdown throughout February, which likely affected advertising and circulation sales as well as physical events for those publishers who previously relied on them.
Archant appointed a new chief executive, Lorna Willis, in March. It has not made any pay cuts for staff throughout the pandemic and around 25 jobs lost have been put down to “natural attrition” rather than redundancies.
[Read more: Archant’s new CEO says pandemic gave publisher ‘permission to think differently’]
Fellow regional publishers JPI Media and Midland News Association made the second biggest furlough claims in the UK news media industry in February, of between £100,001 and £250,000 each.
Newsquest also increased its number of furloughed staff in February, going from claiming between £25,001 and £50,000 per month in December and January to between £50,001 and £100,000 in February.
The news industry as a whole claimed somewhere between £765,018.26 and £1.9m in February. No exact figures are given in the public Government data, only banded ranges.
This means the total value of the claims rose from January, when it was between £535,018 and £1.525m, and December, when it was in the region of £390,000 to £1.18m.
[Read more: Media furlough claims in December, January, March]
The latest increase comes after the Guardian paid back their furlough claim in full, totalling £1.6m, since the last data release.
Also upping their claims from January to February were Time Out England, KM Media Group and Conde Nast. The latter is currently planning to implement a global editorial and commercial strategy resulting in an as-yet unconfirmed number of redundancies.
Belfast Telegraph publisher Independent News and Media and Southwark News both decreased their claims, while Immediate Media London stopped claiming in February although the specialist magazine publisher’s Bristol base continued to make use of the scheme.
[Read more: Immediate Media CEO Tom Bureau on mag giant’s subs-fuelled pandemic rebound]
HMRC has only been able to reveal which companies are making use of the furlough scheme since December, even though it went live in March last year, because of taxpayer confidentiality rules under the Commissioners for Revenue and Customs Act 2005.
A Treasury direction made under the Coronavirus Act 2020 in November corrected this and now requires HMRC to name on a monthly basis the employers who have claimed cash and how much.
Reach, the UK’s biggest regional publisher and biggest commercial publisher overall, used the furlough scheme earlier in the pandemic but has not done so since the data releases began.
Aside from the Guardian, others who paid back money to the Government after withstanding the pandemic better than expected include PA Media, The Spectator, The Telegraph, and magazine publisher Future.
Furloughed staff have 80% of their wages up to a maximum of £2,500 a month paid by a combination of the Government and their employer for the time they are off work. Some publishers chose to further top up wages so staff did not lose out.
See below for a full list of UK media companies that used the job retention scheme in February, ranked by their latest claims and with claim totals given in £.
Regional press
| Company | Dec-20 | Jan-21 | Feb-21 |
| Archant | 50,001 to 100,000 | 100,001 to 250,000 | 250,001 to 500,000 |
| JPI Media | 100,001 to 250,000 | 100,001 to 250,000 | 100,001 to 250,000 |
| Midland News Association | 50,001 to 100,000 | 100,001 to 250,000 | 100,001 to 250,000 |
| Newsquest | 25,001 to 50,000 | 25,001 to 50,000 | 50,001 to 100,000 |
| Tindle Devon Newspapers | 10,001 to 25,000 | 25,001 to 50,000 | 25,001 to 50,000 |
| KM Media Group | 10,001 to 25,000 | 10,001 to 25,000 | 25,001 to 50,000 |
| City AM | 25,001 to 50,000 | 10,001 to 25,000 | 10,001 to 25,000 |
| Baylis Media | 10,001 to 25,000 | 10,001 to 25,000 | 10,001 to 25,000 |
| Highland News and Media | 10,001 to 25,000 | 10,001 to 25,000 | 10,001 to 25,000 |
| Iliffe Media Publishing | 10,001 to 25,000 | 10,001 to 25,000 | 10,001 to 25,000 |
| Tindle Newspapers Wales and the Borders | 0.01 to 10,000 | 10,001 to 25,000 | 10,001 to 25,000 |
| Irish News | 10,001 to 25,000 | 10,001 to 25,000 | 10,001 to 25,000 |
| Independent News and Media (owner of Belfast Telegraph) | 10,001 to 25,000 | 10,001 to 25,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 |
| Southwark News | 0.01 to 10,000 | 10,001 to 25,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 |
| Gazette Newspaper Group | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 |
| Holderness Newspapers | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 |
| Iliffe Media | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 |
| Iliffe Media Group | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 |
| New Milton News and Media (also Iliffe-owned) | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 |
| Post Newspapers | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 |
| Stratford News and Media | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 |
| Tindle Newspapers | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 |
| Tindle Newspapers Surrey and Hampshire | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 |
Broadcast
| Company | Dec-20 | Jan-21 | Feb-21 |
| Bauer Radio | 50,001 to 100,000 | 50,001 to 100,000 | 50,001 to 100,000 |
| Global Radio (via Global Media Group Services) | 0.01 to 10,000 | 10,001 to 25,000 | 25,001 to 50,000 |
| Bauer Media Audio | 10,001 to 25,000 | 10,001 to 25,000 | 10,001 to 25,000 |
| Al Jazeera | 0 | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 |
| ITN | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 |
Digital media
| Company | Dec-20 | Jan-21 | Feb-21 |
| Tortoise Media | 0 | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 |
| Vice | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 |
Magazines
| Company | Dec-20 | Jan-21 | Feb-21 |
| Time Out England | 0.01 to 10,000 | 25,001 to 50,000 | 50,001 to 100,000 |
| Conde Nast | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 | 10,001 to 25,000 |
| Chelsea Magazine Company | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 |
| Time Out | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 |
| The Economist | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 |
| Immediate Media Bristol | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 |
| Positive News | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 |
| Immediate Media London | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0 |
B2B media
| Company | Dec-20 | Jan-21 | Feb-21 |
| William Reed | 10,001 to 25,000 | 10,001 to 25,000 | 10,001 to 25,000 |
| Incisive Business Media | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 |
Specialist news
| Company | Dec-20 | Jan-21 | Feb-21 |
| France Media | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 |
| Haber Weekly Newspaper | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 |
| Hamodia Newspaper | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 |
| Jewish Telegraph | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 |
| The Stage | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 |
Picture: Velour Noire/Shutterstock
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