7. 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 Mrs P to understand the reasons why she could not do so. We have also considered the time the organisation has taken to respond to Mrs P.
8. When bringing the complaint to us, Mrs P explained the date of events was May 2020, when it was identified her father had a brain tumour. She provided this as her date of knowledge. Date of knowledge is a term we use for when someone knew they had a reason to complain. As a result, for the complaint to come to us in time, it would need to come to us by May 2021. We understand Mrs P first complained to the Trust in June 2021. This means the complaint would have been out of time at this point.
9. We discussed this with Mrs P to understand more about this and if there were any reasons for this. Mrs P explained her father died in August 2020, so she complained within a year of his death.
10. As set out above, the law says a complaint must come to us within one year from the day they first became aware they had our a reason to complain. Our Service Model Guidance goes on to say:‘2.276 The date the complainant had reason to complain is not always the same date the incident occurred. For example, an unexpected complication from a surgery may not come to light until several months later when it had begun to cause health problems for the complainant. 2.277 A complainant may be aware of an issue at the time, but not experience a serious impact until a later date. For example, a complainant receives poor dental treatment that leaves them in a lot of pain, but they do not raise a complaint about this until several months later when the pain leads to a serious gum infection. In this instance the date of the initial dental treatment would usually be when the complainant had notice to complain. Not when the injustice became serious enough they decided to complain about it’.
11. We acknowledge Mrs P has provided the date of death as the date of knowledge. It seems from the original complaint made to Trust the concerns in care started before this. We think it is reasonable to suggest there were concerns in care in May 2020.
12. Recognising Mrs P’s account and the dates she has given to us, we have also carefully considered the time limit if we were to accept August 2020 as the date of knowledge. We have identified further delays which we will explore in detail below.
13. Mrs P complained to the Trust in June 2021. The Trust provided four complaint responses, and in its fourth response in February 2022 explained it was passing some concerns to a different second hospital to respond to. We understand Mrs P then came to us whilst waiting for the second hospital to respond. We closed the case whilst Mrs P waited to receive the response. We explained about our time limit as this point, and advised Mrs P over the phone she would need to send us a written explanation to account for the delays so far.
14. In the Trust’s responses dated 25 October 2021, 1 December 2021 and 14 February 2022 it had sign posted Mrs P to our service, explaining we have a time limit so it is important to come to us as soon as possible. The second hospital provided its response on 15 March and the complaint appeared to be ready for us at this point.
15. We understand Mrs P went back to the Trust further at this point, and we are mindful of why she did this and can understand she wanted more information from them. We acknowledge she then continued to chase the Trust, and it was not responding to her. We recognise how frustrating this must have been.
16. We are conscious Mrs P was chasing the Trust at this time, and acknowledge it was causing delays in responding to her. We would like to reassure Mrs P we have taken this into account. The are some gaps where it does not appear anything was happening, for example from August 2022 and April 2023, and September 2023 and March 2024.
17. Acknowledging the Trust took a long time to respond to Mrs P, we have identified a gap between the final response in November 2024, and the complaint coming to us in March 2025. We have carefully discussed this with Mrs P to understand if there were any barriers in coming to us sooner at this time.
18. Mrs P has explained she has caring responsibilities and has little spare time, which we recognise. She also explained grief is a factor and she initially decided it may be better for her mental health to give up. As time passed, she felt she wanted to take this further.
19. We empathise with the position Mrs P was in. We do not underestimate the difficulties she faced. We also respect her choice that she did not know if she wanted to pursue her complaint at a very difficult time.
20. Mrs P had already started and engaged in the process from a much earlier time, over several years, as she had pursued five complaint responses. This supports we think it would have been possible to come to us sooner.
21. Overall, we have seen the complaint was potentially out of time when Mrs P first complained to the Trust and when we advised about our time limit in March 2022. We have also identified a period of delay after the Trust’s final response. We appreciate the difficult circumstances described and have considered these very carefully. We have not seen these would be exceptional reasons to allow us to justify putting the time limit to one side.
22. It is clear Mrs P’s complaint is extremely important to her, and we recognise what a difficult time she has been through. Our decision is not intended to detract from this and we are grateful to her for taking the time to contact us.