A SENIOR manager and an accomplice have been jailed for a £3.5 million fraud on the NHS.

Among the trusts Neil Wood, 41, plundered over seven years was the trust responsible for Bootham Park Hospital until October last year – Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust.

When he worked at the trust and later after he moved to a post with NHS England, Wood, 41, siphoned off funds for himself, his wife Lisa, 40, and a friend Terry Dixon, 46.

According to Simon Higginbotham, specialist fraud lawyer at the CPS, Wood received more than half of the £3.5 million he took from the Yorkshire trust, Leeds Community Healthcare Trust and NHS England, by outsourcing service contracts to his friends for work that could have been done in-house.

Wood, of Heydon Close, Meanwood, Leeds, was jailed for four years and eight months after admitting two conspiracies to commit fraud by abuse of position.

Terry Dixon, of New Dixton Road, Monmouth, convicted by a jury of one of the conspiracies, was jailed for a year and Lisa Wood, of Heydon Close, Meanwood, Leeds, was given a 16-month prison sentence suspended for two years after admitting money laundering.

Her husband also admitted a conspiracy to defraud by false representation.

The defendants were brought to justice by a joint operation involving the North East police regional asset recovery team and HM Revenue and Customs.

Apart from Bootham Hospital, the Yorkshire trust was responsible for mental health and mental disability services at Acomb Gables, Acomb; Clifton Hospital; Peppermill Court, York; Selby War Memorial Hospital; Meadowfields Cue in York; Worsley Court, Selby; York Hospital; Cherry Tree House, York; Field View, York; Mill Lodge Community Unit, Huntington; Oak Rise, Acomb; Selby North Children’s Centre; Systems House, Clifton and The Avenue clinic, Clifton.

  • This story has been amended after one of the original defendants in the case was cleared of any wrongdoing.