Regional publishers JPI Media, Archant and Midland News Association topped furlough claims for the UK news media industry in January.
Each publisher claimed between £100,001 and £250,000 from the Government’s job retention scheme in January, when the UK went back into lockdown amid a surge of Covid-19 cases and deaths.
Archant and MNA had upped their furlough payments from between £50,001 and £100,000 in December. JPI was already in the higher band at the end of the year.
As a whole, the news industry claimed somewhere between £535,018.25 and £1.525m in January.
[Read more: Media furlough claims in December, February and March]
In December it claimed between £390,000 and £1.18m. No exact figures are given in the public Government data – only banded ranges.
City AM was the only media company that reduced the size of its claim to the extent it fell into another band – from claiming between £25,000 and £50,000 in December to somewhere between £10,001 and £25,000.
The business title, which has now been digital-only for a year and hopes to return in print before the autumn, made nine redundancies in editorial during October.
See below for a full list of UK media companies that used the furlough job retention scheme in January
There were just two media companies that were not using the furlough scheme in December but did so in January: broadcaster Al Jazeera and slow news start-up Tortoise Media, both claiming amounts up to £10,000.
A number of other companies increased their claims in January, potentially because of the extra lockdown restrictions: regional publishers Tindle Devon Newspapers and Southwark News, magazine publisher Time Out and LBC owner Global Radio.
The Guardian continued to be the only national newspaper publisher with staff on furlough, in the £50,001 to £100,000 band.
Some others used the scheme earlier in the pandemic, including the UK’s largest commercial publisher Reach, and the Telegraph which returned the payments it had received after strong subscriptions growth helped it stay in profit.
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.
See below for a full list of UK media companies that used the job retention scheme in January, with claim total given in £.
National press
| Company | Dec 20 | Jan 21 |
| Guardian News and Media | 50,001 to 100,000 | 50,001 to 100,000 |
Regional press
| Company | Dec 20 | Jan 21 |
| JPI Media | 100,001 to 250,000 | 100,001 to 250,000 |
| Archant | 50,001 to 100,000 | 100,001 to 250,000 |
| Midland News Association | 50,001 to 100,000 | 100,001 to 250,000 |
| Newsquest | 25,001 to 50,000 | 25,001 to 50,000 |
| Tindle Devon Newspapers | 10,001 to 25,000 | 25,001 to 50,000 |
| City AM | 25,001 to 50,000 | 10,001 to 25,000 |
| Baylis Media | 10,001 to 25,000 | 10,001 to 25,000 |
| Highland News and Media | 10,001 to 25,000 | 10,001 to 25,000 |
| Iliffe Media Publishing | 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 |
| Irish News | 10,001 to 25,000 | 10,001 to 25,000 |
| KM Media Group | 10,001 to 25,000 | 10,001 to 25,000 |
| Southwark News | 0.01 to 10,000 | 10,001 to 25,000 |
| Gazette Newspaper Group | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 |
| Holderness Newspapers | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 |
| Iliffe Media | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 |
| Iliffe Media Group | 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 |
| Newbury Weekly News (bought by Iliffe Media in 2019) | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 |
| Post Newspapers | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 |
| Stratford News and Media | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 |
| Tindle Newspapers | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 |
Broadcast media
| Company | Dec 20 | Jan 21 |
| Bauer Media Audio | 10,001 to 25,000 | 10,001 to 25,000 |
| Global Radio | 0.01 to 10,000 | 10,001 to 25,000 |
| Al Jazeera | £0.00 | 0.01 to 10,000 |
| ITN | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 |
Digital media
| Company | Dec 20 | Jan 21 |
| Tortoise Media | £0.00 | 0.01 to 10,000 |
| Vice | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 |
Magazines
| Company | Dec 20 | Jan 21 |
| Time Out | 0.01 to 10,000 | 25,001 to 50,000 |
| Chelsea Magazine Company | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 |
| Conde Nast | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 |
| The Economist | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 |
| Immediate Media Bristol | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 |
| Immediate Media London | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 |
| Positive News | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 |
B2B
| Company | Dec 20 | Jan 21 |
| William Reed | 10,001 to 25,000 | 10,001 to 25,000 |
| Incisive Business Media | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 |
Specialist news
| Company | Dec 20 | Jan 21 |
| France Media | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 |
| Haber Weekly Newspaper | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 |
| Hamodia Newspaper | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 |
| Jewish Telegraph | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 |
| The Stage | 0.01 to 10,000 | 0.01 to 10,000 |
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