University Hospitals of North Midlands NHS Trust

3. Miss O complains about the care and treatment she received from the Trust from December 2018 to July 2019.

4. She says: • the Trust failed to stitch her labia back together when she had her daughter in December 2018 • she had three cancelled referral appointments • during her appointment on 9 July 2019, the consultant stated her labial tear was considered a natural deformity and they would not correct this on the NHS.

5. Miss O says she was left in excessive pain from the tear, and the complications affected her relationship with her partner, which has since deteriorated. She says she felt let down and could not spend time bonding with her daughter due to these failings.

6. Miss O is seeking systemic changes so this does not happen to anyone else, and £4000 in financial remedy for her private surgery.

7. Miss O gave birth to her daughter in December 2018. During the birth she suffered a tear to her labia. When she tried to arrange a consultation to get this rectified on the NHS, her appointments were cancelled three times. Miss O did eventually attend a consultation at the Trust on 9 July 2019 where she was advised the tear was a natural deformity and any corrective surgery would not be covered on the NHS. Miss O had to arrange and pay for private corrective surgery that she believes should have been carried out on the NHS. Miss O complained to the Trust, receiving a final response to her concerns in March 2020.

10. 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. We have discussed this with Miss O to understand the reasons why she could not bring her complaint to us sooner. We have also considered the time the organisation has taken to respond to Miss O. We can see the local resolution process with the Trust was from November 2019 until March 2020. This was not a significant length of time, and it does not present a strong reason for us to put the time limit to one side.

11. We can see Miss O received a final response from the trust in March 2020. On 26 March 2020, we paused our work on NHS complaints due to the additional pressures it was facing with the COVID-19 pandemic. In correspondence sent from us to Miss O in March 2020, she was made aware of the following: ‘You will need to come to us within two months of us taking health complaints again, so please do keep an eye on our website’.

12. Our pause on cases ended on 31 June 2020. Miss O did not contact us again until April 2021. Nine months elapsed between the end of the case pause and Miss O contacting us. We consider this to be a significant delay.

13. In line with our last communication to Miss O, we would expect her to have been in touch with us within two months of the pause being lifted. We had no contact from Miss O at that time. Information is also available on our website, and Miss O could have searched for information on progressing her complaint during this time.

14. We discussed the delay with Miss O who advised she did not contact us sooner because she was waiting for us to contact her. While this may have been the case, our letter from March 2020 was clear that it was Miss O’s responsibility to approach us after the pause was lifted.

15. Miss O did not make us aware of any significant barriers which would have prevented her from pursuing this complaint with us sooner. As such, we have not seen a reason to put our time limit to one side. We appreciate our decision may be disappointing for Miss O, but we hope our explanation is clear.

1. We have carefully considered Miss O’s complaint about the University Hospitals of North Midlands NHS Trust (the Trust). After careful consideration, we have decided the complaint falls outside of our time limit.

2. We were sorry to hear about Miss O’s complications after delivering her baby in December 2019, and the subsequent cancelled appointments which led to delays in a consultation. We appreciate how distressing this was for Miss O.