5. Mr X complains about the care and treatment Practice A, Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust and United Lincolnshire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust gave Miss Y prior to her death in October 2021.
6. Mr X believes Miss Y would have lived longer if she had received appropriate treatment and care.
7. Mr X is seeking an apology service improvements and a financial remedy.
8. Mr X raised concerns with Practice A, Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust and United Lincolnshire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust in November 2021.
9. United Lincolnshire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust provided its response on 23 March 2022.
10. Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust provided its response on 21 April 2022.
11. Practice A provided its response on 31 March 2023. This was followed by a response by NHS England on 12 June 2023 which had reviewed Practice A’s actions.
12. Mr X and his daughter contacted us in April 2022 and July 2023 and finally brought the complaint to us in June 2025.
15. 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.
16. Mr X had concerns about Miss Y’s care and treatment prior to her death in October 2021. We are using October 2021 as the date of knowledge. This means that when he contacted us in July 2023 his complaint was 9 months outside our time limit. When he contacted us again in June 2025 the complaint was 2 years and 8 months outside our time limit.
17. Mr X raised concerns about Miss Y’s care and treatment on 15 November 2021.
18. Mr X received responses from United Lincolnshire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust in March 2022 and Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust in April 2022.
19. Mr X’s daughter called us on 12 May 2022 regarding the complaint and was advised to send the information in for consideration. We have no record of receiving any information.
20. The Practice and NHS England provided responses in March and June 2023, respectively.
21. Mr X called us on 20 July 2023 and we spoke to his daughter who advised they had waited for the responses from all the organisations involved and these had now been received. The daughter indicated they would complete an online complaints form and provide the complaint correspondence. However, there is no record that this was done.
22. Mr X contacted us on 4 June 2025 seeking an update on his case. However, as indicated above, we were unable to find any complaint form or correspondence. Mr X was asked to complete an online form and submit this with the complaint correspondence. We received this on 12 June 2025.
23. We recognise that Practice A and NHSE responses took longer than the two acute trusts responses and delayed the complaint being brought to us. We have not penalised Mr X for that. However, we do consider that Mr X had opportunities to bring his complaint to us sooner after the telephone contacts in May 2022 and July 2023.
24. We think it is reasonable to expect Mr X to have acted sooner during the period May 2022 and June 2025. Our record shows that Mr X’s daughter was asked to send the complaint to us in May 2022 but we have no record of this being received. This contributed to the delay in bringing the complaint to us.
25. Furthermore, following the call in July 2023 no further contact was made with us for almost two years. While we understand that Mr X thought the matter was progressing we consider he should have contacted us sooner than June 2025 to check on his complaint. This would have prevented his complaint from going even further outside our time limit. In the circumstances, we have not seen enough evidence to justify a decision for us to set aside our time limit.
Conclusion 26. The complaint was brought to us outside of our time limit. For the reasons set out above, we do not see good reason to set our time limit to one side.
27. It is clear from our discussion with Mr X and his complaint papers that it has been a very difficult period for him and we understand how much this complaint means to him. It is important we consider and act within the law and we regret any further upset this decision may cause. We hope that this statement clearly explains the reasons why we will not be considering the complaint further.
1. We have carefully considered Mr X’s complaint about Practice A, Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust and United Lincolnshire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust.
2. We were sorry to hear of his concerns about his partner Miss Y’s care and treatment prior to her death in October 2021.
3. After considering the relevant information, we have seen that the complaint falls outside of our 12-month time limit. We consider the time taken by Mr X to bring his complaint to us is the main reason the complaint is outside our time limit. For this reason, we will not consider the complaint further.
4. We appreciate the time Mr X committed to making this complaint and recognise this decision will be disappointing. We explain in this statement the reasons for our decision. We were sorry to read how much the experience impacted on him.