Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust

2. Mr G says the Trust failed to carry out appropriate assessments before discharging his father from hospital on 8 December 2022. He says as a result of the failings his father had to be readmitted within 2 hours and died in hospital on 9 December 2022. Mr G says his father’s death may have been prevented if the Trust had not discharged him. He would like the Trust to apologise for the impact the failings had and improve its service.

4. Our Service Model Guidance says a complainant must refer their complaint to us within one year from the day they first became aware that they had a reason to complain. This is referred to as the ‘date of knowledge’. We cannot consider complaints brought to us more than one year after the date of knowledge unless we can see there was an exceptional circumstance which prevented the person from doing so.

5. On his complaint form Mr G says he became aware of the need to complain straight away and we have accepted 9 December 2022 as the date of knowledge. To meet our time limit Mr G needed to formally bring his complaint to us by 9 December 2023.

6. Mr G made his initial complaint to the Trust on 12 April 2023 and the Trust responded on 23 May 2023. Mr G sent a further complaint on 15 June 2023 and the Trust sent its final response to him on 28 July 2023. The Trust’s final response referred Mr G to the Ombudsman and advised him to contact us immediately due to our time limit.

7. Mr G sent his complaint to us on 11 June 2024. This is 18 months after the date of knowledge and almost 11 months after the final response from the Trust. On his complaint form, and during our discussion on 17 January 2025, Mr G said he did not bring his complaint to us sooner as he wanted to gain his mother’s agreement first. Mr G said it was several months later that he decided to bring his complaint to us as he did not accept what the Trust had said in its final response.

8. We acknowledge Mr G’s decision not to bring his complaint to us immediately after the Trust’s final response and the reasons he has provided to support his decision. However we do not think this is an exceptional circumstance which would allow us to set aside our time limit.

9. Having considered all the information, we think it would have been possible for Mr G to bring his complaint to us within our time limit. We have not seen any evidence to suggest there was a significant barrier preventing him from bringing his complaint to us within our time limit and we have seen no evidence which would allow us to set our time limit aside and investigate his complaint at this time. For this reason, we have decided not to consider this complaint further.

10. We acknowledge how distressing this incident was for Mr G and his family and the profound impact the death of his father has had. We hope this statement helps Mr G to understand our decision. We would like to offer our condolences on his loss.

1. We have carefully considered Mr G’s complaint about the Trust and have decided the complaint is outside our time limit.