The South London Press owed its staff nearly £100,000 when it went out of business last year, official documents have revealed.
Liquidators were appointed in June last year after the 160-year-old title suddenly closed the previous month.
The paper historically covered Lewisham, Southwark, Lambeth and Wandsworth, but its coverage area expanded in its later years as it sought more advertising. The traditional local paper for Greenwich, the Mercury, was closed and merged into the SLP in 2019.
Employees were owed £99,587, a progress report from the liquidator, Begbies Traynor, has disclosed. It is believed there were six members of staff when it closed. The company’s directors were owed a further £160,000.
One director agreed to pay £10,000 to the liquidator after assets had been “transferred at a minimal value”, the progress report said.
The loss of the outlet – which was followed this year by the closure of the independently-run Brixton Blog – left much of south London without a local news publication. The SLP had been passed through several owners this century – and lost its headquarters in Streatham – before ending up in the hands of Street Runners, a leaflet delivery firm, in 2017.
In later years, the SLP’s football coverage had been the main selling point for many readers. Its former sports editor, Richard Cawley, now runs a newsletter and podcast covering Charlton Athletic.
Of the local print titles with original journalism in the area, only Southwark News remains, with The Greenwich Wire and Salamander News in Lewisham as online-only titles.
The News Shopper, which closed its print editions in Greenwich and Lewisham in 2020, is part of the giant US-owned Newsquest group and shares content with other titles in its group.
The government recently launched the Local News Fund to help secure the future of local journalism in England; while The Greenwich Wire was eligible to bid for its first set of grants, the timescales were too tight for it to do so.
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