The Walton Centre NHS Foundation Trust

4. Mr Y complains about The Walton Centre NHS Foundation Trust diagnosis and treatment between July 2019 and May 2022. Specifically, he complains the Trust:

• did not diagnose him with rib dysfunction.

5. Mr Y says the Trust’s lack of diagnosis has left in avoidable pain. He also says an earlier diagnosis may have led to treatment sooner, and stopped the pancreas issues he now has. Mr Y says he has now lost trust in the NHS.

6. Mr Y wants the Trust to add documents he has to his medical record, and a second opinion.

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.

9. Mr Y says he knew about all the matters brought to us by July 2019, when he had his injury and the Trust did not diagnose him correctly. This means to be within time he would have needed to bring his complaint to us by July 2020. He did not bring a complaint that was ready for us until January 2025. The complaint is therefore four years and six months outside of our time limit.

10. Mr Y raised his complaint to the Trust in March 2022. This was two years and eight months after first becoming aware he had a reason to complain and one year and eight months after our time limit. We asked Mr Y for the reasons for the delay. He said that as the issue is ongoing the time limit becomes obsolete. He did not tell us of any other reasons for the delay. We can understand why Mr Y may think that because the issues are ongoing that the time limit would not apply. The law is clear that the one-year time limit begins from the date a person first becomes aware of a reason to complain. Mr Y told us this was in July 2019, therefore his complaint is out of time.

11. There was another gap between when the Trust responded to his complaint in October 2022, and when he returned to it in July 2023. This was a period of nine months. We asked Mr Y for the reasons for this delay and he did not give us any reasons. Taking this time to return to the Trust without an explanation has caused his complaint to be delayed.

12. In summary, we have decided not to look into Mr Y’s complaint because it is out of time, and we do not think there are sufficient reasons for us to set the time limit to one side.

13.We hope our explanations go some way to help Mr Y understand why we cannot consider his complaint further. We would like to thank Mr Y for taking the time to bring his complaint to us. We are very sorry to hear about the experience he had at the Trust.

1. We have carefully considered Mr Y’s complaint about the care he received from The Walton Centre NHS Foundation Trust (the Trust). We are sorry to hear about the experience he had. Events at the Trust have clearly caused him distress.

2. Having considered Mr Y’s complaint, unfortunately it falls outside of our 12month time limit. We have not seen strong reasons to enable us to put our time limit to one side.

3. We know this news may cause Mr Y added distress. We hope our explanations below explain how we have fully considered this and why we are not able to consider his complaint further.