Barts Health NHS Trust

2. Mr O complains Barts Health NHS Trust failed to appropriately facilitate the delivery of his baby son on 21 May 2022. Mr O says the doctor was not prepared for the delivery and ignored repeated requests for help from his wife.

3. Mr O says the due to the doctor not being ready to deliver the baby, his wife gave birth and the baby fell onto the bed. Mr O believes this caused injuries to the baby, which led to its death from a bleed on the brain.

4. As outcomes to his complaint, Mr O would like the Trust to recognise it made a mistake with the delivery of his baby. He would also like service improvements, to ensure another family does not go through a similar experience and a financial remedy.

6. The law says a person needs to make their complaint to us within a year of becoming aware of the problem. We cannot investigate complaints brought to us after one year, unless we consider there is a good reason to do so. We have discussed this with Mr O to understand the reasons why he could not do so. We have also considered the time the organisation has taken to respond to Mr O.

7. Mr O complained to the Trust on 6 June 2022, it responded on 18 August 2022. Therefore, the local resolution process took two months and 12 days. This did not have a significant impact on Mr O’s ability to approach us within 12 months.

8. After Mr O received the Trust’s final response, he did not approach PHSO for almost 11 months, on 10 July 2023. Our intake team identified the complaint had not been fully addressed. Mr O went back to the Trust on 18 July 2023 and received a further response on 13 March 2024. Mr O then came back to us on 2 April 2024.

9. After Mr O approached us on 10 July 2023, Mr O returned to the Trust promptly at our request. He also returned to us promptly, after receiving this response. Therefore, the relevant period to consider, is the time between the Trust’s response on 18 August 2022 and Mr O initially approaching PHSO on 10 July 2023.

10. Mr O says the reason he was not able to approach PHSO sooner was because his wife was suffering from back pain and mental health issues and he was looking after his daughter, whilst working full time.

11. We can appreciate Mr O and his family went through an incredibly traumatic time following the death of their son, nine days after his birth. We also completely appreciate the difficulty Mr O must have experienced in the 11 months since he received the Trust’s response, in looking after his wife and daughter. However, there is no indication his ability to complain significantly changed in that time, after he had demonstrated he was able to make the initial complaint to the Trust.

12. To access our service, a complainant must fill out our online form, and send the complaint correspondence between themselves and the Trust. There is no indication anything prevented Mr O from doing this sooner, especially considering he was able to write a complaint letter to the Trust in June 2022, shortly after the death of his son.

13. We are very sorry to learn about the awful circumstances surrounding Mr O’s complaint. This complaint is outside of our 12-month time limit and we have not seen any reasons for us to set aside the time limit. We will therefore not be conducting any further work into this complaint.

1. We have carefully considered Mr O’s complaint about Barts Health NHS Trust (the Trust). We are very sorry to learn of the circumstances surrounding the death of Mr O’s son. We are grateful to him for highlighting this complaint to us. The complaint falls outside of our time limit and we have decided there is no good reason for us to put our time limit aside to consider it further. We recognise our decision will be disappointing for Mr O and we will explain the reasons for our decision in detail below.