The Metropolitan Police announced it would take the “national lead” in assessing the allegations after more than a dozen women from across Britain came forward to say they had been molested by the television presenter.
A detective will lead a team from the Met’s child abuse investigation command, who will contact all the alleged victims and work with the BBC.
Other potential victims are being encouraged to contact their local police forces or the children’s charity NSPCC for support, in the wake of an ITV exposé of Savile that was watched by 1.9million people.
However Scotland Yard insisted it had not opened an official investigation into the Radio 1 DJ and Top of the Pops star, who died last year aged 84.
The Met said in a statement: “The Metropolitan Police Service has today, Thursday 4 October, agreed to take the national lead in assessing the recent information regarding allegations made against the late Jimmy Savile.“The assessment will be undertaken by the Serious Case Team of the Met’s Child Abuse Investigation Command under the leadership of Detective Superintendent David Gray.
“Our priority will be to ensure a proportionate and consistent policing response putting the victims at the heart of our enquiries. It is too early to say how many individual allegations there are, and we will be making contact with all those concerned in due course. It is not an investigation at this stage.
“We will be working closely with the BBC investigations unit.
“Anyone else with information is urged to make contact with their local police so that any further information can then be passed to us.”
It came as the BBC pulled two archive editions of its chart show from television schedules, because they had been presented by Savile.
A spokesman for the corporation said it was appropriate to “postpone” the broadcasts while allegations against the former star remained a “live issue”.
So far more than a dozen women have claimed that Savile forced himself on them when they were teenagers, sometimes on BBC premises. The singer Coleen Nolan has also said that he asked her to join him at a hotel when she was just 14.
Police forces in Surrey, Sussex, Northampton and Jersey, as well as the Met itself, have confirmed that they have received recent allegations.
In the ITV documentary broadcast on Wednesday night, a woman told how she and two other girls from a children’s home in Surrey were invited to London before being abused in a dressing room at Television Centre by Savile, Gary Glitter and a third household name.
Karin Ward told Exposure: The Other Side Of Jimmy Savile: “I saw Gary Glitter have sex with a girl in Jimmy Savile’s dressing room. I didn’t see it completely but that’s what was going on and nobody batted an eyelid.
“Jimmy Savile had a [14-year-old girl] on his lap and he had his hand up her skirt. The girl Gary Glitter was having sex with also came from Duncroft [school]. I think she might have been not quite 14.”
She said she was “freaked out” after the other TV personality tried to grope her, then “humiliated” her.
The BBC has said it is “horrified” by the recent claims but has denied that senior figures knew about Savile’s activities and turned a blind eye.
A spokesman said: “We have asked the BBC investigations unit to make direct contact with all the police forces in receipt of allegations and offer to help them investigate these matters and provide full support to any lines of inquiry they wish to pursue.”
However its response could come under scrutiny from the public inquiry into media standards.
Anne Main, the Conservative MP for St Albans, has written to Lord Justice Leveson asking him to investigate how the BBC handled the allegations about Savile. The public service broadcaster’s Newsnightprogramme also pulled a programme about Savile on the grounds that it could not stand up the claims made against him.
She wrote: “I have concerns that the public would find it incomprehensible that such serious allegations have only been looked at internally by the BBC.”
