Canary staff not paid amid fears for news website’s future

Workers at the leftwing news outlet the Canary fear it will not survive beyond this year amid access to funds being blocked and allegations of financial mismanagement and internal turmoil.

The site, which was founded in 2015 against a backdrop of the wave of support for the then Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, appeared set to expand after a multimillion-pound injection of funds last year.

But the outlet faced significant financial challenges in July after it announced that it was unable to pay staff and contractors as a result of Lloyds Bank unexpectedly blocking access to “a substantial amount” of its money. The bank did not give a reason.

A number of staff at the outlet were not paid again at the end of August. “Any payment difficulties have been solely due to our ongoing debanking issues,” a Canary spokesperson told the Guardian.

Some journalists at the Canary, however, have said they believe the banking issues had been used to distract from wider financial mismanagement.

They claim the funding, believed to be more than £2m, has been squandered on projects including a short-lived newspaper and the purchase of other websites.

Staff at the outlet, where there are about 50 full-time and part-time jobs, have moved to unionise by forming a branch of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ). Over the summer a full staff meeting was told that the new funding had all but gone and they were all facing the possibility of redundancy, with about £400,000 left to see the Canary through to December.

Since the Canary faced issues with access to its funds, staff say they have been notified that late payments of pension contributions by the company have been reported by the National Employment Savings Trust (Nest), the government-backed workplace pension scheme that helps employers meet their legal duty of automatic enrolment.

It is understood that tensions have also risen after, in the spring, workers say, they were asked by management to sign “non-negotiable” non-disclosure agreements, and told that if they refused they would be subject to changes to their employment contracts.

The site describes itself as anti-austerity, anti-Zionist and pro-freedom of expression, among other things. Steve Topple, the outlet’s chief executive, told staff in May that he and others in the management team had serious concerns about the integrity of the Canary as an organisation “and also the level of reputational risk”.

“We are at a time when we are doing things that are putting a massive target on our backs, and I am expecting the full force of the system to be placed upon us in due course,” he wrote in a message which also said he would not tolerate the leaking of confidential information beyond the organisation.

Staff at the website said in 2022 that they had “overthrown” management and were running the organisation as a cooperative. That structure was later dissolved.

Some had hoped that the title’s longer term future had been secured after Cecil Hetherington, the founder of the Northern Irish classifieds website Used Cars NI and chair of the house-sale platform PropertyPal, became a major shareholder, contributing an estimated £2m.

“We were told originally that Steve had taken on a donation from Cecil Hetherington, but then the ‘debanking’ happened and things changed,” said one worker, referring to the period in which funds were blocked by Lloyds.

“Payments have been late for the last three months, wages and invoices have been late. Even basic stuff hasn’t been taken care of, with the result that the website went down at one point.

“We were told that only about £400,000 was left out of the £2m.”

A spokesperson for the NUJ said: “The NUJ’s concern is, and always has been, for the interests of its members and we are working with all our members at the Canary.

“We have spoken with Steve Topple and we are working together to ensure the continued stability of the Canary. It’s in that context that we are promoting a constructive relationship.”

Topple said: “Lloyds debanked the Canary and closed its account without warning earlier this year, confiscating and holding all of the company’s cash reserves.

“This has resulted in severe financial and emotional stress on the company and its employees. We are working through the financial disruption caused by the closure of our bank account and are liaising closely with staff to achieve an equitable balance between meeting our current commitments and safeguarding the organisation’s future sustainability. We have tried to be as open as possible with staff, while balancing the need for confidentiality and avoiding unnecessary upset.

“We have undoubtedly made mistakes in our internal communications, and we apologise to everyone in Canary Media Limited and our readers for that. We are currently in discussions with our employees to address their very understandable concerns and would appreciate the privacy to do that.”