Wrexham Council Publish ‘Lost’ Jillings Report

This morning Wrexham Council published a redacted version of the Jillings Report into North Wales ‘care’ home abuse.

The 300 page report went live on the Council website at just after 9am and will be available to read for 28 days, a copy has also been lodged in the Library. The Council have told us that they have beefed up their web servers to cope with expected demand for the document.

You can download the PDF documents from Wrexham.gov.uk here.

Officials from Flintshire said in November following renewed national coverage of the story that they uncovered ‘several copies’ of the 1996 report – of which all copies were believed to have been pulped at the time.

Rumours had circulated about existing copies with Channel 4 reporting they believed ‘a copy’ existed. Other rumours included copies in council archives as well as the House of Commons library. In theory this document should have be made public via Freedom of Information law, however councils took several rounds of legal advice.

We wrote how our FOI request had taken over 80 days before it was effectively refused (more here), on grounds stated as “The Council believes that the public interest in maintaining the exemption outweighs the interest in disclosure at the present moment in time.”

In May Wrexham.com had the opportunity to read an unrestricted copy of the report, with a copy also selling on eBay, more here. This was bizarrely covered in the Daily Post, who at first said the copy did sell and misquoted the seller, and then amended the online story compared to to the prinited story to say that the copy did not sell on ebay, and removed some quotes.

Wrexham Council told us that today’s release is time limited as they wish to be open and publish the report, however do not wish to have it on their website in perpetuity.

We also queried how could a Council that ‘handed all copies’ to the police then publish a copy, however we were told this is a general copy that is being released by several councils rather than specific to Wrexham.

Earlier this year Wrexham.com asked several questions on how a ‘lost’ report could have been so easily found. Wrexham Council stated they could not reply to the FOI as that only covers recorded information, however they did go further and reply to the questions asked:

Where the copy was found (Details of room / building / address if possible)?

The copy was securely filed away. As with all confidential documents appropriate security is in place to protect the information. We are not willing to disclose the building or the room, as it could compromise our future security.

What security precautions were in place in the containment of the copy?

The document was stored in a locked cabinet, in a locked room in a building protected by a monitored alarm security system.

When was the copy found (Date, and time if possible)?

The document was retrieved the moment it was requested by senior management.

Who found the copy?
A senior manager of The Council retrieved the copy.

If the name of the person is not possible, what job title they hold?
Senior Manager of the Council.

Where is the copy of the report at the time of this request?
The document was held in safe storage and has now been released to the Police as part of the investigation by the National Crime Agency.

(We would like to thank the Council for answering the questions, rather than using the obvious loophole that was there to avoid it if they had so wished!)

You can download the PDF documents from Wrexham.gov.uk here.

The report is around 300 pages of scanned , untranslated, information in sometimes quite hard to read typo ridden text. We imagine it will take a while for it to be digested today, however we welcome your thoughts on its contents – either privately via contacting us, on our forums , or tweet us @wrexham .