North West Ambulance Service NHS Trust

2. Mrs B says the Trust failed to treat her daughter and take her to hospital in 2023. She says as a result her daughter did not get the treatment she received and sadly died. Mrs B says her daughter’s death may have been prevented if the failings hadn’t happened. She would like the Trust to advise her of any disciplinary action taken against the paramedics and an apology.

4. Our Service Model Guidance says a complainant must refer their complaint to us within one year from the day they first became aware that they had a reason to complain. This is referred to as the ‘date of knowledge’. We cannot consider complaints brought to us more than one year after the date of knowledge unless we can see there was an exceptional circumstance which prevented the person from doing so.

5. Mrs B says she became aware of the need to complain straight away and we have accepted September 2023 as the date of knowledge. To meet our time limit Mrs B needed to formally bring her complaint to us by September 2024.

6. Mrs B made her initial complaint to the Trust in September 2023 and the Trust investigated and responded in March 2024. In its response the Trust upheld Mrs B’s complaint. It said ‘the conduct of the NWAS clinicians fell below the level that could be expected’ and ‘the treatment fell below the standards that the Trust aim for and was anything other than professional’. The Trust apologised for the treatment it provided during this incident and the impact it had on Mrs B.

7. In its response the Trust said it held a disciplinary hearing but it was unable to share the outcome with Mrs B. The Trust response said as it had upheld her complaint it would complete a patient safety incident investigation report (PSIIR) to identify the areas of improvement and the action it needed to take to ensure the risk of similar incidents happening again in future is reduced.

8. The Trust response said it would send the PSIIR to Mrs B as soon as it was completed. The Trust response said if she remained unhappy after she received the PSIIR she could ask for her complaint to be independently reviewed by the Ombudsman. The Trust sent a copy of the completed PSIIR to Mrs B in August 2024 and closed the complaint.

9. Mrs B brought her complaint to us in August 2025. When asked about the delay in coming to us Mrs B said she waited for the coroner to decide on holding an inquest into her daughter’s death. She said the coroner ultimately decided not to hold an inquest, however it took a long time to reach this decision. She said after she received the coroner’s decision she brought her complaint to us.

10. We acknowledge Mrs B’s decision not to bring her complaint to us immediately after the Trust’s final response in August 2024 and the reason she has provided to support her decision. However we do not think this is an exceptional circumstance which would allow us to set aside our time limit.

11. Having considered all the information, we think it would have been possible for Mrs B to bring her complaint to us within our time limit. We have not seen any evidence to suggest there was a significant barrier preventing her from bringing her complaint to us within our time limit and we have seen no evidence which would allow us to set our time limit aside and investigate her complaint at this time. For this reason, we have decided not to consider the complaint further.

12. We acknowledge how distressing this incident was for Mrs B and the profound impact the death of her daughter has had. We hope this statement helps Mrs B to understand our decision. We would like to offer our condolences on her loss.

1. We have carefully considered Mrs B’s complaint about the Trust and decided it is outside our time limit.