The Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust

3. Mr A complains about the care and treatment the Trust provided to his wife, Mrs A, from June 2023. Specifically, he complains about the following issues:

• the Trust dismissed his wife’s knee infection, failed to take her pain seriously, and did not offer appropriate treatment options.

• the reduction in district nurse visits from daily to weekly meant the pus was not regularly removed from the wound, contributing to the infection getting worse.

• the lack of proper wound care in February 2024 contributed to the infection getting worse.

4. Mr A says losing his wife has had a significant impact on him and his family. He says he has lost his partner of many years, and that he, and his daughters continue to struggle with their grief and adjusting to life without her.

5. By bringing his complaint to our office, Mr A is seeking closure and a financial remedy.

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 A became aware of the issues surrounding his wife’s knee infection in June 2023. To fall within the one-year time limit, we would need to have received this aspect of his complaint by June 2024. Mr A brought his complaint to us in December 2025, which is 1 year and 6 months outside of our time limit.

10. Mr A became aware of the issues surrounding his wife’s admission in February 2024. Again, Mr A brought this complaint to us in December 2025, which is 10 months outside of our time limit.

11. We appreciate the complexity of the correspondence between Mr A and the Trust, including the time taken to receive its responses. We need to consider whether there are exceptional reasons for the delay between Mr A receiving the Trust’s final response in May 2025, which explained his right to bring his complaint to our office, and him contacting us in December 2025.

12. We asked Mr A the reasons he could not bring the complaint to us sooner than he did.

13. We recognise Mr A was dealing with his own health concerns, including an admission to hospital with pneumonia in June 2025, ongoing bladder/prostate issues, and a fall in October 2025 which resulted in an emergency call out system being installed at his home. We also acknowledge the support his daughter provided and that she had changes in her own circumstances when she started a new job in September 2025. We do not underestimate the impact these circumstances had on him.

14. Having carefully considered these circumstances, we do not consider that this prevented him from bringing his complaint to us sooner. We recognise he experienced a number of personal and health difficulties during this period, and we appreciate that managing a complaint alongside these challenges can be difficult.

15. We have also taken into account that he had already sought legal support in relation to his complaint in March 2024, while the Trust’s complaints process was still ongoing. This process continued for some time, and although he later ended this agreement in October 2025, he remained engaged with this process up until that point.

16. We recognise that health and personal circumstances can make it more challenging to progress a complaint. Whilst we fully appreciate how difficult things were for him, we cannot see how this would have prevented him from continuing the complaints process in a more timely manner. There are also advocacy services that can support complainants through the process, especially if they are finding it difficult.

17. To conclude, Mr A’s complaint about the Trust was brought to us outside of our time limit. We consider it would have been reasonable for him to bring the complaint to our office much sooner than he did after receiving the Trust’s final response. We do not think the explanations he has given are reason enough to set our time limit to one side.

18. We were very sorry to learn what happened, and the impact this has had on Mr A and his daughters. We understand how important the complaint is to him and we are grateful to him for sharing his concerns.

19. It is important we act within the law, and that we apply our current approach and process fairly and consistently. We are sorry for any upset this decision may cause. We hope this statement clearly explains the reason why we will not be considering the complaint further.

1. We have carefully considered Mr A’s complaint about The Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust (the Trust). Mr A’s complaint falls outside of our time limit. We considered his reasons for not bringing the complaint to us sooner. We do not think these were sufficient reason to set aside our time limit and so we will take no further action.

2. We thank Mr A for taking the time to tell us about his upsetting experience. We were sorry to read about the ongoing impact of this on him and his family. We hope this statement explains the reasons for our decision.