Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust

3. Miss L complains that clinicians from the Trust’s rapid response team and in its emergency department failed to identify her mother’s stroke quickly enough in August 2022. She is also unhappy with how the Trust handled her complaint. She says there were delays and the responses were incomplete and did not show evidence of any learning. Miss L wants the Trust to accept accountability for what happened and to pay her compensation.

5. 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 asked for clarification from Miss L to try and understand the reasons why she did not complain sooner when she was dissatisfied with the Trust’s response. We have also considered the time the organisation has taken to respond to the complaint.

6. Miss L’s complaint to us is out of time. The events she complained about happened more than two years before she complained to us.

7. Miss L complained to the Trust in March 2023 within one year of the events in question. This was in line with the NHS complaints process. The Trust replied to her complaint on 12 December 2023. It offered her the opportunity to attend a meeting and suggested she should reply within 28 days.

8. On 14 January 2024 Miss L emailed the Trust. She said she needed more time to respond to the Trust’s reply. She sent a further complaint to the Trust on 23 November 2024. This was more than eleven months after the Trust’s first response. She contacted us on the same date. The Trust issued a second response dated 16 June 2025.

9. We asked Miss L to explain the reasons for the delay following the Trust’s first response. She explained that she was unhappy with that response and started working on more questions. In August 2024 she said he had found further papers that contradicted what had been said in the Trust’s response. She said she sent these to the Trust in November 2024.

10. Miss L has not explained why it took so long to reply to the Trust from December 2023 onwards. From August 2024 it was a further three months before she sent a letter to the Trust. We can see no evidence to suggest she was prevented from contacting the Trust, or us, between January and November 2024.

11. We note that Miss L’s concerns about complaint handling are not out of time. We have decided to focus on the more serious complaints that people bring to us, where they may have faced a big impact. For example, these may be about a potentially avoidable death or where someone has suffered prolonged pain. These types of complaints are where we can often make the biggest difference. This will allow us to provide the right level of service to those people, as quickly as possible. This means we are not looking into complaints where we can see there has been a smaller impact. This applies to Miss L’s concerns about complaint handling.

12. Clearly, the events of August 2022 continue to be a source of distress for Miss L and her family. We appreciate our decision not to investigate further is likely to add to their distress. We hope we have clearly explained why we are unable to waive the time limit in this case.

1. We have carefully considered Miss L’s complaint about the Trust. We were sorry to read about her mother’s death. We can see how devastating these events have been for Miss L and her family. We offer our sincere condolences to them for their loss.

2. The complaint falls outside our time limit, and we have decided there is no good reason to put our time limit aside to consider it further. We recognise this will be disappointing for Miss L.