Hannah Richardson

Sharon reached out in February 2022 after Ian’s death, claiming his care home had been stealing from him for almost two decades. Hannah spent a year compiling evidence – including receipts for items unsuitable for Ian and a bank book that should have been closed in 2017 but showed transactions afterwards – and corroborating Sharon's claims with first a city council report and then an Ombudsman report. Sharon and Hannah spoke every few months, Sharon updating Hannah on the reports’ progress and her conversations with the council and the home. In February 2023, she sent an advanced copy of the Ombudsman report. The relationship Hannah had built with Sharon enabled her to bring an anonymised report back to real people through her quotes, Ian’s photographs and her fears she was still missing answers. A month after publication, the city council reopened its internal review. Sharon and Hannah maintained contact and she spoke to her again after the review identified more failings. Hannah ran an exclusive on the second report. Since Hannah's articles, Sharon has been approached by the BBC and ITV. She also hopes to take the matter to court, and Hannah intends to follow that case. The article did 99k page views.

Hannah led Leicestershire Live’s local election coverage this year, a mammoth undertaking with eight local council elections and Leicester’s mayoral election. She did not want to limit LeicestershireLive to repeating manifesto sound bites, so she ran a mayoral hustings, broadcast live on social media. This was a huge challenge for her as she had never done anything like it before. In the weeks leading up to it, Hannah gave candidates a chance to set out their manifestos. She split the debate into key themes and, on the night, went deeper, challenging their pledges. Some were misleading, including claims of £200m in city reserves – February’s budget showed around £55m. There was also a debate raging over whether Leicester should have a mayor, meaning incumbent Sir Peter Soulsby needed to defend his three terms. Candidates had the questions beforehand to help the debate flow but further challenges and debate were not pre-scripted. Hannah published two articles on debate points afterwards and one with the questions she would have asked the Conservative candidate who pulled out on the day.

Hannah's story followed a CQC report into Leicester hospitals’ maternity services. Countless families were failed, including the parents of Ansh Joshi who died at two days old. As a result of her initial article, Hannah was contacted by a charity and offered an interview with them. She decided to separate their story into a human interest piece on the family’s devastation and a second piece on calls for an external maternity review. While other platforms ran their story, focusing on calls for the review, Hannah believes her coverage went beyond and captured their raw grief and trauma. Their quotes brought to life the brutal pain of losing a child through failure by the people supposed to protect him.