University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust

3. Mrs T complains about several issues relating to the care clinicians at one of the Trust’s hospitals gave to her husband in April 2021. She says they denied him the support he needed for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). She says clinicians unfairly restricted her access to the hospital.

4. Mrs T says the events she complained about led to her husband experiencing distressing flashbacks. She says she has had counselling because of how the issues affected her own mental health. Mrs T wants the Trust to acknowledge its failings and apologise for the impact they had. She also wants action to be taken against the individuals involved and payment of compensation.

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 asked for clarification from Mrs T to try and understand the reasons why she did not complain to us sooner.

7. Mrs T complained to the Trust for the first time in April 2021 immediately after the events in her complaint. This was within the one-year timescale for making NHS complaints. Mrs T’s complaint with the Trust continued until it sent its second written response in December 2022.

8. Mrs T contacted us for the first time about these issues in February 2022. We then carried out a primary investigation, which concluded with our decision on 28 October 2022. Mrs T had indicated that she was looking for a significant financial remedy. This is an outcome that can be achieved by taking legal action. We pointed out that we cannot investigate where there is a legal remedy available that is reasonable for someone to take. In the covering letter to our decision we explained how we have time limits for our work.

9. Mrs T then contacted at least ten different solicitors for legal advice. She received responses between March 2023 and February 2024. We would have expected her to return to us around this time if she wanted us to look again at her complaint. She only contacted us again in January 2025. This was three years and nine months after the events she wanted us to consider.

10. We asked Mrs T to explain the reasons for the delay in returning to us. She said we did not tell her about our time limit when we made our decision in October 2022. She said she assumed she would be able to explore other avenues before returning to us. We can see she was in contact with the NMC about a fitness to practise investigation during this period. She also told us she had further contact with the Trust and the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). Mrs T was also pursuing a complaint with another NHS organisation in 2023 and 2024.

11. The evidence suggests we made Mrs T aware of our time limit when she first complained to us. Had she contacted us again as soon as she received responses from solicitors we may have decided to waive the time limit. But she decided to wait around one year after that before returning to us. We can see no evidence she was prevented from contacting us during that period.

12. Mrs T’s complaint also relates to issues that we cannot investigate. Some of her concerns relate to the action of individuals who were employed by a local authority. We can see that Mrs T complained about those issues to the local authority and that she received a response to those concerns in June 2021. The local authority advised her to contact the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO) if she was dissatisfied with its response. Mrs T told us she was unaware that she could have gone to the LGSCO. She could contact them now, but she should be aware that the LGSCO also has time limits for looking at complaints and may also decide these issues are out of time.

13. Mrs T also asked us to look at how the NMC conducted its fitness to practise investigation. The NMC is not an organisation that is within our remit. We cannot investigate complaints about the NMC. We also cannot investigate complaints about NHS personnel or disciplinary matters.

14. Clearly, the events of April 2021 continue to be a source of distress for Mrs T. We appreciate our decision not to investigate further is likely to add to her distress. We hope we have clearly explained why we are unable to waive the time limit in this case.

1. We have carefully considered Mrs T’s complaint about the Trust. We were sorry to read that her husband has died since she first contacted us. We can see how distressing the events Mrs T complained about were for her and her husband. We offer her our sincere condolences.

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 Mrs T.