A Freedom of Information request made to a hospital trust prompted the NHS body investigating day trips Jimmy Saville made with patients. 

Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust started to look into Savile’s external trips with patients after receiving a request for information in 2013.

The report published today found that Savile sexually assaulted four people at Rampton Hospital, Retford.

The newly published report indicated that without the FOI request being made, the hospital would not have been aware of trips Savile made with patients.

The internal review of the FOI request helped the hospital to confirm that Savile had been on two day trips with hospital staff and patients.

“Our investigations into the second trip had been triggered by the original FOIA request and a press cutting with JS’s version of the trip,” the Nottinghamshire report said.

The investigation was prompted by the 2013 request, which asked whether Savile ever took patients to Scarborough during 1971 and 1972, the staff that attended the trips, and if the police were informed.

“As part of the FOIA request, a newspaper article in the Sunday People dated 8 October 1972 was examined, which identified a further trip of Rampton patients and staff to Scarborough on 21 September 1972,” the report said.

Information found

The information discovered by the hospital includes documents that corroborated the requester’s suspicions that Savile took patients on day trips.

“Again we have found an archived Hospital document confirming the trip which left by train from Retford Railway station on 21 September 1972,” the hospital’s report says.

“The document confirms that ‘a sum of money was found for the lads’ following an arrangement between the amusements owner Jimmy Corrigan and JS

“It also confirms that tea was provided by the previous year’s Mayor, Councillor Jaconelli.”

This information was then corroborated with a patient’s records and a staff member who remembered the trip.

 The full report can be downloaded from here. 

 

I am a journalist and author. I am a journalist at the UK edition of WIRED magazine. In 2015, my first book Freedom of Information: A Practical Guide for UK Journalists, was published. My second book Reed Hastings: Building Netflix, was published in March 2020. I created FOI Directory in 2012 and have maintained it in my spare time ever since.