Northampton General Hospital NHS Trust

3. Mr U complains about the following aspects of his care and treatment at Northampton General Hospital NHS Trust (the Trust) in March 2021. He complains:

• it did not give him oxygen for two days following his stroke on 23 March 2021 • it kept giving him fluids when he was constipated, instead of an enema • its overall treatment was discriminatory.

4. He says he was not given oxygen for two days and this caused damage to his brain. He says he is worried the same thing could happen again.

5. Mr U wants an apology, financial compensation and to see service improvements.

8. 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 Mr U to understand the reasons why he could not do so.

9. Mr U was aware of the issues he is complaining about in March 2021. To be within our time limit he needed to complain to us by March 2022. He complained to us in November 2022 and therefore his complaint is eight months outside of our time limit.

10. Mr U first raised his complaint with the Trust in April 2022, just over a year after the events. He received his final response from it in July 2022, so three months of the time taken is due to local complaint handling. He approached us with his concerns in November 2022.

11. We asked Mr U why he did not complain to the Trust sooner. Mr U says he was not able to raise his complaint to the Trust sooner than April 2022 as he was recovering from a stroke, and this affected his ability to write and to talk. Recovering from the stroke must have been a difficult time for Mr U, and we accept that is likely to have affected his ability, at least for a time, to make a complaint.

12. We wanted to understand a bit more about how that had affected his ability to complain sooner. We know Mr U was able to talk and communicate via his mobile telephone in February 2022, because at that time he contacted police about the actions of security staff at the hospital.

13. We asked Mr U to confirm when in his recovery he was able to talk and write, and whether this would be supported by medical or other evidence. Mr U would not give this information to support his reasoning for not raising his concerns sooner.

14. We also note Mr U waited three months after the Trust’s final response before he contacted us. He was not able to provide a reason for not contacting us sooner.

15. We have considered whether we agree that Mr U could not raise his complaint sooner than April 2022. In summary, we have not seen sufficient evidence that Mr U was not able to raise his concerns with the Trust prior to April 2022. We therefore do not conclude it was unreasonable to expect him to have raised his complaint himself or sought assistance from an advocate prior to this date. Mr U has also not provided any explanation as to why he waited three months before contacting us regarding his complaint response.

16. Overall Mr Us complaint is eight months out of time. We are not persuaded Mr U has given sufficient reasons for the delay for us to put the time limit to one side. We will therefore take no further action on her complaint. Once again, we are sorry to hear about the problems Mr U had with the Trust and about his stroke.

1. We have carefully considered Mr U’s complaint about Northampton General Hospital NHS Trust (the Trust). To reach this decision we reviewed the information he provided. Having done this, we have decided not to consider his complaint further. This is because of the time that has passed since the events he complains about.

2. We are sorry to hear about the distress Mr U has experienced, and the effect that has had on him. We understand our decision may be disappointing. We will explain the reasons for this and the factors we have considered in our primary investigation of his complaint.