9. The law (Health Service Commissioners Act 1993) says a person needs to make their complaint to us within a year of becoming aware of the problem they wish to complain about.
10. Mrs K became aware of her concerns during her husband’s admission and when he died. We therefore consider she had cause to complain from 26 April 2022 onwards.
11. We received Mrs K complaint on 20 August 2024. This was 16 months outside our time limit.
12. We cannot investigate complaints brought to us outside our time limit unless we see there is a good reason to do so. We considered the time it took the Trust to deal with the complaint (local resolution) and Mrs K’s reasons for any delays.
Time taken for local resolution
13. Mrs K complained to the Trust on 16 February 2024. The Trust responded on five and a half months later on 1 August 2024. Mrs K then promptly submitted her complaint form to us 19 days later.
Complainant’s reasons for the delay
14. Mrs K’s complaint to the Trust was 22 months after her husband’s death. We asked her to explain the time taken to make the complaint.
15. Mrs K explained she could not complain sooner after her husband’s death because of the challenges she and her family (including her two young children) were facing as a consequence of what happened.
16. In the immediate aftermath she had to deal with multiple administrative tasks such as dealing with bank accounts, utilities, and achieving citizenship. She was also searching for employment and managing the busy demands of looking after her two young children.
17. Mrs K sold her house as she could no longer afford mortgage payments. She and her children temporarily moved to a different area to live with her father-in-law.
18. Towards the end of the 2022 Mrs K purchased a new home but there was a lengthy legal process to follow and she could not move in until the summer of 2023. She says there was then a lot to handle with setting up the new home such as utilities and insurance. She also had to arrange new school and GP registrations for the family.
19. Mrs K explained in 2023 she found full time employment, but this was challenging as she underwent training for a few months. She also had to sell her car and purchase a new one
20. Mrs K says she was not aware of the 12 month time limit for making complaints. She says she could not have coped emotionally with making a complaint in the first 12 months after her husband’s death as it was too distressing for her. She says she got copies of her husband’s medical records after his death but then could not cope with going through them or researching things and therefore would not have been able to complain.
21. Although Mrs K did not make a complaint to the Trust about her concerns in 2022 or 2023, she did approach a solicitor about a clinical negligence claim. She found out in March 2023 that the solicitor could not take the claim any further. She says she was not ready to complain sooner than February 2024.
Our conclusion
22. The Trust responded to Mrs K complaint within the six month timeframe stipulated in the NHS Complaints Regulations (2009). There is no indication of a delay here, and we do not consider this is the reason the complaint has reached us significantly outside our time limit.
23. The main period of delay is the 22 months between Mr K’s death and Mrs K making her complaint to the Trust. We carefully considered her explanations for this delay to see if there was a good enough reason for us to set aside our time limit.
24. We are sorry to hear of the struggles Mrs K faced after her husband’s death. It is clear this was unexpected and deeply upsetting, and we do not underestimate how difficult it must have been for Mrs K to now be without her husband, looking after two young children.
25. Mrs K had a lot to manage in nearly all aspects of her daily life after her husband’s death, as well as dealing with emotional impact of this. We can therefore understand, to a degree, why she felt unable to complain straight away.
26. We can also appreciate why Mrs K felt unable to go through her husband’s medical records after he died. However, we should also point out that this is not a requirement for complaining to the NHS about the care someone has received.
27. We note that as time went on, although Mrs K had many things to manage at once, these were more day-to-day events such as moving home and managing the household in 2023.
28. The 22 month gap until Mrs K made her complaint is significant and we are not persuaded that there would not have been opportunities for Mrs K to make a complaint sooner during this time.
29. We recognise that handling the complaints process as well as the busy demands of life would have been challenging for Mrs K and, for her, complaining was less of a priority. However, this is not a good enough reason for us to put aside the time limit. There is support available to people when making complaints, such as NHS complaints advocacy services, which would have been available to Mrs K had she looked into this.
30. We also note that after her husband’s death, Mrs K was able to reach out to a solicitor and engage with them about a clinical negligence claim. When this was unsuccessful a further 11 months elapsed before Mrs K complained to the Trust about the same issues.
31. We cannot accept not knowing about our time limit as a reason for the delay as this information is readily available in the public domain and does not explain the initial delay in complaining to the Trust. We are also a publicly funded organisation, and because there are time limits to what we can look into we must thoroughly examine any periods of delay.
32. Having considered Mrs K’s reasons, it appears she understandably prioritised dealing with the challenges she had to face as a result of her husband’s death. The initial period of delay in the months after her husband’s death is reasonable. However, when we considered all the reasons provided, we are not persuaded they justify the extent of the significant delay in complaining to the Trust.
33. We have decided we cannot set aside our strict time limit on this occasion and therefore we will take no further action. We recognise how important this complaint is to Mrs K. Although this is not the outcome she was hoping for, we hope we have clearly explained the reasons for our decision in this statement.