4. Mrs L complains about the care Mrs M received from the Trust during her admission to hospital in late 2023.
5. Mrs L believes the lack of care and treatment led to her mum’s death. Mrs L says the distress of losing her mum, and frustration of dealing with the Trust has had a significant impact on her own mental health.
6. Mrs L would like the Trust to make changes to prevent the same problems happening to someone else.
9. The law (The Health Service Commissioners Act (section 9)) says a person needs to bring their complaint to us within one year of becoming aware of the problem. We cannot investigate complaints brought to us after one year, unless we consider there is a strong reason to do so.
10. To assess the time limit, we have set out a timeline of key events.
11. Mrs M was admitted to hospital in September 2023 and remained an inpatient there until her death in November 2023.
12. Mrs L started to complain around two weeks after her mother’s admission and also contacted our service shortly afterwards. We advised she needed to complete the local complaint process before bringing the complaint to us. Mrs L submitted a further and more substantial complaint to the Trust after her mother died. We recognise this was a difficult time for Mrs L.
13. Mrs L copied us into her complaint correspondence with the Trust and other services during the complaint process. In August 2024, the Trust apologised it had been unable to resolve her complaint and confirmed the local complaint process was now complete.
14. We sent Mrs L a complaint form two days after the Trust confirmed its local complaint process had finished. We asked her to complete it so we could consider her complaint further and advise what would happen next.
15. Mrs L contacted us roughly two months later and asked if we were looking into her complaint. We had not yet received the completed form, and so we resent it to her.
16. In December 2024, Mrs L copied us into an email she sent to the Trust. She reiterated some of the points she had been unhappy with and told the Trust she would raise her complaint to the Ombudsman.
17. In early February 2025, Mrs L called our helpline and asked us to resend the complaint form, which we did the same day. This was the first time Mrs L had contacted us directly since we resent the complaint form around three months earlier.
18. The next contact from Mrs L was in May 2025, when she sent in the completed complaint form. We then accepted her complaint for consideration.
19. Mrs L was aware she had cause to complain about all issues at the time her mother died in November 2023. We can see from her correspondence and complaints to the Trust, she felt it was responsible for her death.
20. By law, she would have needed to bring her complaint to us by November 2024. In March 2024, we made Mrs L aware she had one year from the date she became aware of the problem to bring her complaint to us. Mrs L did not bring the complaint to us until May 2025, and she is therefore outside of the one-year time limit.
21. As the complaint is out of time, we have considered Mrs L’s reasons for delay.
22. Between September 2023 and August 2024, we can see Mrs L actively pursued her complaint with the Trust. She was in regular correspondence with it and sought advice on the local complaint process from our service. We cannot see any significant gaps or delays caused by Mrs L during the local complaint process. We will not hold this period against Mrs L.
23. After local resolution ended with the Trust, we sent our complaint form to Mrs L three times over the course of nine months, and there were long gaps in between where we did not hear from her.
24. Mrs L explained to us she suffers from anxiety and depression. She says some days she struggles to get out of bed, look after herself or do anything difficult. She says her mother’s death was very hard on her and exacerbated her problems. She says some days she could not bear to look at the paperwork for this complaint.
25. She added she also has several physical health problems. She explained sometimes she is in hospital multiple times in a week. We are very sorry to hear about Mrs L’s physical and mental health problems and do not doubt this must make things difficult for her.
26. We can see in the initial local resolution process up to August 2024, Mrs L was in very regular correspondence with the Trust and other organisations involved. This shows she was able to complain, even in the aftermath of her mother’s sad death.
27. This appears to have changed after the local complaint process was complete, and we do understand her mental health might have deteriorated at this point. Given there is a delay of approximately nine months, we would need to see strong reasons that prevented Mrs L from complaining over a long period.
28. Mrs L sent a detailed email about her complaint to the Trust in December 2024. This was around four months after the Trust told her it would not respond to her complaint further. By this point, we had provided her with our complaint form and made her aware of our outstanding requirements on two occasions.
29. We asked her why she was not able to also fill out our complaint form at the same time as she emailed the Trust in December 2024. She told us she could not say for sure, but sending this email was likely very draining for her. Whilst we acknowledge this, we think this was also an opportunity for her to send her complaint form back to us.
30. As she was able to contact the Trust and our service multiple times during the period of delay, it is difficult for us to say she could not complete our complaint form during this time. Also, had she told us she was struggling to complete the form, we could have helped her or directed her to a complaint advocacy service to support her to do this.
31. Mrs L also explained she had some technical problems in opening and completing our complaint form. She says this is why she had to request it several times.
32. Based on our records, it does seem likely she had some problems accessing our complaint form. However, we must consider there were long gaps of six weeks to three months between each time she requested the form and before she sent it in May 2025.
33. Had she asked for assistance, we could have identified and fixed the problem she was having or sent her a hard copy in the post, there is no evidence Mrs L informed us at the time of any issues she was having. We do not think this explains the long gaps in between contacting us and does not account for such a long delay.
34. In summary, having considered Mrs L’s reasons for delay, we have decided we are unable to put our time limit to one side. This is because we do not think Mrs L’s reasons justify the extent of the delay. We know it was not her intention to delay bringing the complaint and we do not want to diminish what must have been a difficult period for her. It is important we consider and act within the law and we regret any further upset this decision may cause.
1. Mrs L complains about the care her mother, Mrs M, received from East and North Hertfordshire Teaching NHS Trust (the Trust). We were very sorry to learn about Mrs M’s death and know it must be incredibly distressing for Mrs L to think the care the Trust provided, contributed to her death.
2. We have carefully considered the complaint and unfortunately it falls outside of our time limit. We have decided the reasons for the delay in bringing the complaint to us are not strong enough to put our time limit aside to consider it further. We are therefore unable to take further action on the complaint.
3. We do not wish to diminish the concern Mrs L feels about what happened.