Earlier this month Printweek reported that millions of Brits have started the new year with incorrect information printed in their calendars and diaries, following the government’s decision to shift the bank holiday set for Monday 4 May back to Friday 8 May, to mark the 75th anniversary of VE Day.

While many of the estimated 30 million 2020 calendars and diaries were printed with incorrect information as the date change was announced after the majority of the UK’s 40 million diaries and calendars had already been printed, a number of UK printers took immediate action to replace the incorrect pages in their products, at significant cost to their businesses.

In a report published by The Telegraph on Friday (10 January), calendar publishing business AM Print Finishers said the change had cost the firm £200,000 to reprint materials, and had been “close to catastrophic”.

Director Stuart Bennett said: “This is a huge sum, not easily financed by a small business. There has been no offer of compensation from the government, despite the fact that it changed the date months after its own guidelines dictate.”

Allan & Bertram said last summer that 400,000 of the calendars it had already printed for 2020 needed to have the May pages replaced, costing the company around £200,000.

He told The Telegraph the business had received no compensation or support from the government despite repeated requests and, according to managing director Andrew Bennett, had been forced to “shoulder the cost of this decision on our own”.

The Stamford Notebook told the newspaper that its academic diaries were already on sale by June 2019 and that the company had to send out a note to say that the diaries were printed prior to the bank holiday change.

Despite the demands for compensation by the affected businesses, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy said the announcement had been made “as soon as was practicable” and that there were currently no plans for compensation.