'Did not act until after the details were published by The Mill'

Dear reader – it's been quite a week. Two senior figures in Greater Manchester have resigned from their roles following Mill reporting.

• William Morris, the chair of the board at the University of Greater Manchester, stepped down following Mollie's revelations about his wife, Conservative peer Baroness Morris. We reported late last year that the baroness, a member of the House of Lords and former Tory shadow minister, is the director of a ‘centre’ at the university that is actually a private company that has charged the university £3m in recent years despite having zero employees. Baroness Morris won’t tell us how much she’s personally earned from the arrangement.
• James Binks, the £200,000-a-year chief executive of Rochdale council, has quit weeks after Jack got hold of an investigative report that revealed allegations of sexual misconduct when he was a senior council officer in Manchester. The Guardian reported late last year that the council "received the findings of an inquiry into his conduct more than five weeks ago but did not act until after the details were published by The Mill." Binks was suspended from his role after our story came out, and has now resigned.

Not just that, but the Andrew Milne story has taken a step forward after local MP Phil Brickell raised it again in parliament and the Solicitors Regulation Authority said it is now investigating Milne. You might remember that Milne is the City of London lawyer who has been buying up dozens of freeholds – in Horwich, Tameside, Southport and Sheffield – and then trying to pressure leaseholders into buying them for extortionate sums.

This is the kind of accountability that proper investigative journalism can achieve. And it’s what local areas lose when their newspapers shrink down, start writing about celebrities and stop taking risks. Crucially, it's a form of journalism that only works if it is funded by readers who believe in quality and are willing to pay for it, meaning that we don't have to rely on Big Tech's advertising algorithms and mindless "clickbait" for our income.

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Joshi Herrmann, founder and editor of The Mill