Two Jimmy Savile charities to close

Two charities set up in Jimmy Savile's name are to close, they have confirmed.

The Leeds-based Jimmy Savile Charitable Trust and the Jimmy Savile Stoke Mandeville Hospital Trust had considered just changing their names.

However, both felt they would always be linked in people's minds with the late presenter who is at the centre of sex abuse allegations.

In a statement, they said all their funds would be distributed to other charities.

The decision to close both organisations was taken with "great sadness", they said.

But, the primary concern was to protect the charitable causes they support and a continued focus by the media on the two bodies was "potentially damaging" to their beneficiaries.

The identity of those receiving money from the two charities would not be publicised and it would be up to each recipient to decide whether to make public any donation, bosses said.

No future requests for funding from the charitable organisations would be considered, they confirmed.

The Jimmy Savile Charitable Trust was primarily based in the Leeds area.

On the Charity Commission's website, the body states that the trust's objectives were to "provide funds for the relief of poverty and sickness and other charitable purposes beneficial to the community", as well as "provision of recreational and other facilities for disabled persons".

The Jimmy Savile Stoke Mandeville Hospital Trust was set up in 1981, following a request from the Buckinghamshire hospital where he volunteered for many years to help raise funds for rebuilding work.

The charitable trust's latest accounts, filed with the Charity Commission in March, showed it had funds totalling £3.7m in 2011/12. It had an income of £132,546 and spent £43,866 in the same year.

The Stoke Mandeville charity had funds of £1.7m, according to the Charity Commission files.