HM Courts and Tribunals Service

3. Ms D is complaining on behalf of her mother, Ms K, that HMCTS did not process Ms K’s appeal against removing Ms D as her financial attorney December 2017.

4. As a result, Ms D says the court has not had an opportunity to consider Ms K’s views. Ms D says because of this, Ms K had to move away against her wishes and her mental and physical health deteriorated. Ms D believes other family members have used Ms K’s finances for their gain. Ms D says this has caused her, Ms K and Ms D’s immediate family distress.

5. By bringing this complaint to us, Ms D wants the court to hear Ms K’s appeal.

6. In November 2017, Ms D was removed as financial power of attorney for her mother, Ms K.

7. In December 2017 Ms K, with support from her social worker, submitted documents to the Court of Protection to appeal this. The court confirmed receipt of these documents in December 2017.

8. In February 2020, Ms D contacted the court to complain as there had been no progression in her mother’s appeal.

9. In July 2021, Ms D emailed the court to chase the progress of her mother’s appeal again and other matters.

10. In January 2022, Ms D says she emailed HMCTS again and referred to her concerns that the court had not considered her mother’s appeal.

11. Between 2022 and 2024 several court hearings took place regarding Ms K’s welfare.

12. In March 2025 Ms D raises a further complaint with HMCTS about the progress of her mother’s appeal. HMCTS provided its final response in June 2025.

13. Ms D approached an MP for support in bringing this complaint to us on 8 June 2025.

HMCTS did not process Ms K’s appeal

16. Section 5(1)(ii) and Section 6(3) of the Act requires a person to make a complaint to an MP in writing and request they refer it to our office within one year of becoming aware of the issue. We can only investigate complaints submitted outside this timeframe if there is a good reason to set aside the time limit.

17. We have discussed this with Ms D to understand the reasons why she, Ms K or another person on Ms K’s behalf could not have reasonably done this. We have also considered the time the organisation has taken to respond to Ms D.

18. Ms D says in December 2017 the court acknowledged receipt of Ms K’s documents. She says she was aware not to chase or duplicate correspondence until at least four weeks had passed. Ms D told us she was aware the court had a significant backlog at that time, so she allowed time for the court to process it. She says she had no reason to doubt the documents were not where they needed to be, given the court’s acknowledgement.

19. Ms D says she first became aware of an issue in the progression of her mother’s appeal in February 2020, as there had been no progress or update. Ms D says she complained to the court about this in February 2020. The court acknowledged her complaint, but Ms D says she did not receive a further response. Ms D next followed this up with HMCTS in July 2021 and says she did not receive a response.

20. Ms D explained Ms K could not progress the complaint or appeal herself due to her having dementia. Ms D explained Ms K’s other children would not have benefitted from supporting Ms K with the progression of her appeal or a complaint.

21. From what Ms D has told us, we consider it is unlikely Ms K could have progressed this matter herself. Additionally, we recognise the sensitivity around the relationship between Ms D and her siblings.

22. We can understand why Ms D did not seek to progress her concerns immediately. As she has explained, although she was aware she needed to wait at least four weeks before making enquiries about her documents, she also knew HMCTS had significant backlogs. We therefore recognise why she may have wished to wait a little longer than usual before approaching HMCTS.

23. Having said this, we cannot ignore the significant amount of time that elapsed between submission of the appeal documents and Ms D beginning to make enquiries with HMCTS about what was happening with them. The evidence shows this was a period of almost two and a half years (between December 2017 and February 2020).

24. Even though we acknowledge the court system can have delays and be a long process, we cannot overlook or set aside such a considerable period of apparent inaction by Ms D. We would reasonably have expected her to try to progress matters during this time. Had she done so, it is highly likely she would have known much earlier than February 2020 that her mother’s appeal was not progressing in the way she had expected. This would also have allowed her to progress her complaint (and subsequently approach her MP) much earlier than she did.

25. Even if we accept Ms D’s date of knowledge as February 2020, we have seen evidence of further delays in her proactively progressing her concerns. Ms D has said HMCTS did not respond to the concerns she raised at this point, yet she failed to pursue this until July 2021, well over a year later. It was not until March 2025 that she began to pursue the complaint more actively, over seven years after the events she seeks to complaint about had begun.

26. We have explored Ms D’s reasons for not progressing the matter earlier. She told us that, between 2018 and 2021 she was involved in a safeguarding allegation and police investigation. She explains this prohibited her from seeing her mother or having access to her medical records. Ms D says she was unable to speak with anyone outside the family without becoming overwhelmed and was diagnosed with PTSD.

27. This was no doubt a difficult time for her and we can understand why a complaint to HMCTS may not have been uppermost on her mind. However, we cannot overlook the overriding purpose of her appeal, namely that she wanted more involvement in her mother’s life (and presumably believed that her mother wanted the same thing). That is why we think it was so important for her to try to actively progress her complaint in a timely manner. Unfortunately, her failure to do so is what took matters beyond our time-limits.

28. Between 2020 and 2025, Ms D says her focus was on safeguarding her mother and responding to court proceedings, regarding her mother’s health and welfare. She says she was excluded from information which meant she did not know how much impact this was having on her mother. As before, timely pursuit of her complaint may have helped with this.

29. Ms D says HMCTS did not provide her with a clear explanation that it had not processed the appeal, despite her attempts to chase both directly and through court proceedings. Although we do not doubt this, pro-active and timely pursuit of her complaint may have brought her the clarity she sought.

30. Ms D says she was advised to exhaust the court’s complaints process before escalating to an MP. Whilst this is undoubtedly true, that advice would have been given to her if she had pursued her complaint earlier. For that reason, we cannot say this advice was a significant contributory factor in her failing to approach her MP sooner.

31. We do not underestimate these events will have been extremely difficult for Ms D. We asked Ms D if anyone else within her immediate family, or an advocate could have supported Ms K in progressing her appeal, chasing Ms D’s complaints with HMCTS or supporting with taking the matter to an MP.

32. Ms D told us it her immediate family members were also involved in, or affected by, the dispute and safeguarding allegations so could not act on her mother’s behalf. She also says they did not have the knowledge to explain the complaint. Ms D says she approached an advocacy and legal service who said they could not help because of their area restrictions, or because they could not support with court of protection matters.

33. We would like to thank Ms D for taking the time to explain the reasons for the delay in approaching an MP earlier than June 2025. We are sorry to hear she struggled to access support and her emotional challenges.

34. Having carefully considered the reasons Ms D has given us for not raising this complaint to her MP in writing within 12 months, we have not seen sufficient justification to set aside the statutory time limit.

35. We recognise Ms D says she was focused on her mother’s health, welfare and court proceedings. We understand she also says she did not know the severity of the impact. We should explain the Act’s requirement is for a person to raise the complaint within 12 months of becoming aware of the problem, not the impact.

36. We are sorry to hear of the mental health difficulties Ms D experienced and the pressures relating to her mother’s welfare. The information she has provided shows that despite this, she was able to raise her concerns with HMCTS on more than one occasion. She was also able to engage in several court proceedings and pursue other complaints during this time.

37. Our records show Ms D approached a different MP in May 2020 with a complaint about another organisation involved in her mother’s case. The MP referred that case to us and Ms D engaged with our process until we closed that case in June 2021. We considered Ms D made part of that complaint outside of our time limits. We explained our time limit consideration to Ms D in our decision. Ms D approached the same MP again, for support in bringing another complaint about that same organisation to us in February 2022.

38. We consider this demonstrates Ms D was aware of our process, including the requirement for an MP referral and our time limits. The evidence also shows she was able to pursue other complaints, despite the reasons she has given us for the delay in this case.

39. Therefore, we consider Ms D could have reasonably approached an MP about the matter alleged in this complaint earlier than June 2025. Therefore, we have not seen good reason to set the time limit aside and we will take no further action on this complaint.

40. We appreciate that this outcome is likely disappointing for Ms D and Ms K. We would like to thank Ms D for bringing her complaint to our attention. We hope this decision clearly explains our reasons for not pursuing her complaint, while acknowledging the difficulties she experienced.

1. We have carefully considered Ms D’s complaint on behalf of her mother, Ms K, about HMCTS. We are sorry to hear Ms D believes the court did not have the opportunity to consider Ms K’s views about Ms D being removed as her financial power of attorney. We understand from what Ms D has told us this has been a distressing time for her, her family and Ms K.

2. We have seen this complaint falls outside of our time limit. We have not seen a good reason to set our time limit to one side, so we cannot consider this complaint further. We explain the reasons for this in more detail below.