Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust

3. Mrs X complains about the care and treatment her father received from the Trust. Specifically, she says the Trust failed to diagnose and treat her father’s sepsis in a timely manner.

4. Mrs X says the Trust’s failings led to her father’s death. She also says the circumstances around her father’s death caused his family significant emotional distress.

5. As an outcome of her complaint Mrs X wants the Trust to acknowledge the failings set out above and to make service improvements. She is also seeking a financial remedy.

7. The Act, which gives us our powers to consider complaints, 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 can see that Mrs X became aware of cause for complaint in May 2024 and complained to us in October 2025. This means her complaint falls outside of our one year limit.

8. We have therefore discussed this with Mrs X to understand the reasons she could not have complained to us sooner. We have also considered the time the Trust took to respond to Mrs X.

9. Mrs X’s father sadly died in August 2023. Mrs X says that in January 2024 she considered the circumstances around her father’s death and was concerned enough to request his medical records from the Trust. In May 2024, she tells us she became aware from the records there were problems around Mr A’s care and his sepsis diagnosis.

10. Mrs X says she contacted solicitors in February 2025 to seek legal advice on the matter. Mrs X complained about her concerns to the Trust in June 2025. The Trust provided a complaint response in September 2025, Mrs X contacted us in October 2025 and received a further final response in January 2026. Therefore, we received the complaint 17 months from the time Mrs X says she became aware of the problem.

11. We asked Mrs X the reason for not making the complaint to us within 12 months of being aware of the issue. Mrs X explained that she had concerns about the care Mr A received, which led her to request his medical records. She said it took considerable time to review and understand the records, including the medical terminology and the significance of various test results. She also told us that reading through the records was emotionally challenging given the circumstances of her father’s death, which contributed to the delay in making her complaint. In addition, Mrs X said she was not aware of our 12-month time limit.

12. We fully recognise that medical records often contain complex clinical information that can be difficult for someone without medical training to interpret. We also appreciate that reviewing records relating to the death of a close family member can be a distressing and emotionally demanding process. Our decision is in no way intended to suggest otherwise. In considering our time limit we have thought only about whether this meant she was unable to complain sooner.

13. We can see that Mrs X had concerns about her father’s care from January 2024 and that these concerns were confirmed when she received his medical records in May 2024. We understand it may have taken some time to read through the records and understand what had happened. We must also recognise that making a complaint to the Trust 13 months later means there was a significant delay.

14. As Mrs X believed from May 2024 that something may have gone wrong with her father’s care, we consider she could have raised her concerns with the Trust much earlier. While medical records can help someone better understand what happened, there is no requirement to obtain or review them before making a complaint. We cannot conclude this is a strong reason to set our limit to one side for the period of thirteen months before complaining to the Trust.

15. We also note that Mrs X sought legal advice about her concerns in February 2025. This suggests she was actively looking into the matter by that time and so was able to contact the Trust at that time.

16. We recognise that Mrs X says she was not aware of our time limit. Information about our role, including our time limit, is freely available on our website, and from advocacy services or directly from the Trust. As such, we cannot accept this as being a strong reason for delay.

17. We recognise that Mrs X has spent considerable time trying to understand the circumstances surrounding her father's care and death, and that this has been an important and deeply personal matter for her. We recognise that she may be disappointed by our decision. Having carefully considered the reasons for the delay, we have not seen any that might allow us to put the time limit to one side and so we will take no further action with this complaint. We thank her for giving us the opportunity to consider her concerns.

1. We have carefully considered Mrs X’s complaint about Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust (the Trust), which she has raised on behalf of her late father, Mr A. We are very sorry to hear about the circumstances of Mrs X’s complaint and the sad loss of her father.

2. Having thought about the information available to us, we can see that this complaint falls outside of our one-year time limit, and we have not seen there is good reason for us to put our time limit aside to consider it further. This means we will take no further action, and we explain below how we reached this decision.