Hello and welcome to The Blackpool Lead.
Staff accessing patient records at NHS trusts is very much under scrutiny after ten people were suspended relating to the death of three-year-old Noah Woods in September.
Trusts have been told to take a zero tolerance approach to staff inappropriately accessing patient records - which often comes about when an incident takes on a big public profile (as with the tragic case of Noah Woods).
Blackpool is not immune from such incidents and today The Blackpool Lead reveals formal disciplinary action taken against staff for exactly that reason.
Blackpool briefing
🍺 The Sun Inn - the tangerine-painted pub on Bolton Street - is under new management with Preston publican Ray Woods at the pumps. The Gazette describes Woods as having ‘a wealth of experience running pubs across the country, as well as in his native Lancashire’.
That is an accurate statement - but rather overlooks historic and recent troubles. In 2022, Woods was banned from running any firm after his business was liquidated with £1.4m worth of debts.
In 2024, he was banned from entering the Tulketh Tap Room in Preston - despite living above it - with the licensing officer at Lancashire Constabulary describing Woods’ reputation as ‘in tatters’ due to how the pub was run. We asked both Lancashire Constabulary and Blackpool Council for their view. Lancashire Constabulary said they did not object to Woods running the pub but were monitoring the situation as they would with any pub.
✈️ A Blackpool councillor has called for a long-term strategy to help bring about the return of international flights to the town’s airport.
Cllr Paul Galley, who is the leader of the Conservative group on Blackpool Council, says the resort’s City of Culture bid is as an opportunity to invest in the Airport.
And he says a key part of his proposal is making much more of Blackpool’s direct rail connection with Manchester Airport and promoting the resort to passengers in the international destinations already connected to the North West.
Cllr Galley said: “City of Culture is a fantastic opportunity for Blackpool, but I want us to think even bigger about what its legacy could be.
“We should be using it to open Blackpool up to the world.
“Manchester Airport gives us a gateway to destinations across Europe and around the world, and we already have a direct rail connection between Manchester Airport and Blackpool.
“We should be building partnerships with the airport, airlines, rail operators, tourism organisations and tour operators to sell Blackpool much more strongly in those international markets.
“Someone arriving at Manchester Airport should know just how easy it is to get on a train and come directly to Blackpool.
“That gives us the opportunity to attract new visitors, from new countries and new markets, who may never previously have considered Blackpool as a destination.”
Blackpool NHS staff caught inappropriately accessing patient records
By Michael Holmes
A string of local NHS workers have been caught inappropriately accessing patient records, it can be revealed.
The practice has been under the national spotlight after 10 people at an NHS trust near to where three-year-old Noah Woods died in a drowning were suspended over a possible “data breach”.
On the Fylde coast, there were four incidents involving eight employees who were “found to have inappropriately accessed patient records” from January 2021 to December 2023, according to papers obtained from Blackpool Teaching Hospitals under freedom of information laws.
And since January 2024, there have been 18 separate incidents involving 20 workers.
The trust, which runs Blackpool Victoria Hospital in Whinney Heys Road and Clifton Hospital in Pershore Road, St Annes, said it could not say what happened to staff punished before January 2024 - or how many are currently being investigated.
But from January-March 2024, four employees were given “formal disciplinary sanctions”, with one handed informal sanctions such as a verbal warning or more training.
In 2024/25, seven were formally disciplined, one was informally sanctioned and one quit before they could be punished.
The trust said HR processes for some of the cases in 2025/26 are “ongoing” and, “due to the low numbers of closed cases, the outcomes…” have been withheld.
It also refused to give any details about the sole case in 2026/27 to date.