Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust

4. Mrs B complains about aspects of the care and treatment provided to her husband, Mr B, during his eight-day admission to the Trust from 28 May 2022.

5. Mrs B considers her husband’s death at the Trust on 6 June 2022 avoidable, claiming it to be a direct result of various failings in his care. Mrs B is left significantly distressed, describing having watched her husband die in agony with terror in his eyes. She now suffers with a heart condition she ascribes to witnessing these events.

6. To resolve her complaint, Mrs B seeks service improvements to prevent others from suffering in this way.

9. The Ombudsman’s powers are set out in the Act. This is the law that governs our work. Section 9(4) of the Act says a person needs to make their complaint to us within a year of becoming aware of the problem. It says we cannot investigate complaints brought to us after one year, unless we see there is a good reason to do so.

10. Mrs B’s complaint is about the care and treatment her husband received across the eight days her husband was in hospital, up to his sad death on 6 June 2022. This is when Mrs B became aware of her reason to complain. We call this the ‘date of knowledge’. For her complaint to have come to us in time, Mrs B would have needed to have been brought it to our Office within 12 months of the date of knowledge, by 6 June 2023.

11. We first received the information we needed from Mrs B to allow us to consider her complaint, when she emailed us with our completed complaint form on 24 November 2025. This means her complaint came to us over two years and five months outside of our 12-month time limit.

12. When any complaint comes to us outside of our time limit, we must consider the time taken by the person complaining and the time taken by the organisation to respond. We spoke with Mrs B to understand the reasons why she could not bring her complaint to us sooner. We also considered the time the Trust took to respond.

13. From the information shared with us we can see Mrs B first raised her complaint with the Trust on 24 June 2022, just three weeks after her date of knowledge. We can see the Trust sent Mrs B an acknowledgement of her complaint, after which she sent the Trust eight emails between 1 July and 30 August 2022, continuing to raise her concerns.

14. Mrs B attended a meeting to discuss her concerns at the Trust on 12 July 2022, and the Trust sent her a lengthy letter responding to her complaint on 13 October 2022. We can see Mrs B replied with several emails soon after, raising her outstanding concerns. The Trust then sent Mrs B a further response letter dated 18 November 2022 in which it explained it had exhausted its local resolution process, it would not investigate further, and it signposted Mrs B to our Office to pursue her complaint, providing her with our contact details.

15. Less than one week later, on 23 November 2022, Mrs B called our advice line and asked how she could request an independent Ombudsman investigation. We spoke with her and emailed her a copy of our complaint form, advising Mrs B to complete and return this to us in order that we could then consider her complaint.

16. This was all prompt and timely. Mrs B acted quickly after becoming aware of her need to complain by raising her complaint with the Trust. She further demonstrated her engagement by responding to the Trust soon after receiving its first response, and again by contacting us within days of receiving the Trust’s second response when she had been signposted to us. The Trust responded four months after receiving Mrs B’s initial complaint and sent its second response at most one month after receiving Mrs B’s reply. The regulations say the organisation investigating a complaint should respond within six months, and we see the Trust acted in accordance with this.

17. We think the timeliness of the above actions was appropriate and we do not see any concern with the time either Mrs B or the Trust took in completing the local resolution process. Had Mrs B returned her completed complaint form to us when she first contacted our Office and when we emailed her a copy in November 2022, her complaint would have come to us in time.

18. Unfortunately, we did not hear from Mrs B again until four months later, when she called our advice line on 4 April 2023 to ask what information we needed from her so we could consider her complaint. Despite having previously advised on this and sent her our complaint form by email, when Mrs B called again on 4 April 2023 we posted her a copy of our complaint form with a pre-paid envelope, asking that she complete and return this to us so we could look at her concerns.

19. One year and one month passed until we next heard from Mrs B, when she again called our advice line on 24 May 2024 asking what to do to raise a complaint with us. That day we sent Mrs B a third copy of our complaint form, by post and with a pre-paid envelope. Less than two weeks later Mrs B called to confirm she had received the form and had an advocate helping her to complete it.

20. One year and five months passed before we heard from Mrs B again. She called us on 14 November 2025 advising that she had been ill and this had delayed her from being able to submit the form. She then emailed us on 24 November 2025 with her completed form.

21. There are three periods of delay between Mrs B’s contacts with our Office, of four months, 13 months and 17 months. These are significant. Mrs B demonstrated that she was able to engage with the complaints process promptly prior to her first contact with us. From the time she received the Trust’s letter dated 18 November 2022 she was aware that to pursue her complaint she needed to contact our Office, and we then advised her what information we needed from her so we could consider her complaint.

22. Yet, Mrs B did not act upon this for a considerable period, totalling 24 months of delay. We spoke with Mrs B and asked about these delays.

23. Mrs B said because the Trust got everything wrong in its response, she continued to write to it because she wanted it to respond further and give her answers. She said she thought she needed to do this first because otherwise she worried the Trust would also not respond to us. Whilst we understand Mrs B’s desire for a further response, we can see in the Trust’s November 2022 letter it made clear it would not investigate further, and that to pursue her complaint she should bring it to our Office.

24. Mrs B said in her distressed state, she thought she had triggered the Ombudsman’s process by calling so we knew it was a complaint she wanted to make, yet she needed to gather all the evidence she could. On all three of the earlier occasions she called our advice line we explained that to bring us her complaint she did not need to do anything other than just fill in and submit our complaint form.

25. Whilst Mrs B may have had an expectation of a different approach and desire or need for more answers first, we can see she was given clear information from the Trust about how she could pursue matters. We can see that she acted in line with this by contacting our Office, and we then gave her clear information that she only needed to complete and submit her complaint form in order for us to consider her complaint. We are left without good reason as to why she did not act in line with our instruction by not sending us her completed form any sooner.

26. Even on the expectation that the Trust should have responded further, Mrs B left considerable gaps particularly of 13 months and again 17 months before returning to our Office. We would reasonably expect her to have returned to us much sooner, having not received that assumed substantive response to her ongoing complaint in the meantime.

27. From the information Mrs B shared with us, we are aware that on occasion the Trust did correspond back with Mrs B. Yet in that correspondence, it took no substantive action on her complaint. The Trust retained the stance it explained in November 2022, that it would not investigate further and Mrs B should bring her complaint to us, should she wish to pursue it. We cannot see good reason for why Mrs B acted against the consistent advice she was given by the Trust and by us, to bring her complaint to our Office.

28. Mrs B also explained the delay as due to ill health. She said due to witnessing what happened during her husband’s admission, and then her subsequent need to keep writing to the Trust in attempts to get answers, this depleted her health to such a degree she now has heart problems. From speaking with Mrs B, it is clear what happened to her husband has had a significant impact on her life. We recognise she suffered a great bereavement and has become considerably unwell, and we accept this will have had an impact on her ability to complain.

29. It remains however that we can see Mrs B did complain to the Trust just weeks after her husband’s sad death, at a time that her shock, grief and upset was most heightened. We can also see that she continued to send lengthy written correspondence to the Trust throughout this time and these periods of delay, up to the point she submitted her complaint form to us in November 2025.

30. This shows us that even in the immediate aftermath of her husband’s death as well as in more recent times where Mrs B has advised us of her depleting health and the strain this was causing her, she was able to engage with pursuing her complaint in writing to the Trust. We recognise that life has been very difficult and distressing for Mrs B since the events of May and June 2022. It remains we are left without good reason as to why, if she could continue to engage by sending ongoing lengthy emails to the Trust, we cannot see why she could not complete and email or post her complaint form to us at any earlier time.

31. Mrs B also said how she had an emotional breakdown, that it all became too much, and that it felt too overwhelming to fill in yet another form. We do not underestimate the effort and energy it takes to pursue complaints. We recognise that doing so likely felt extremely difficult and burdensome whilst Mrs B was also attempting to manage her grief and ongoing heart problems. We also recognise that distress is not linear or time-bound, and we acknowledge she remains considerably distressed by what happened.

32. It remains throughout this period Mrs B was able to continue her correspondence with the Trust. Mrs B advised us that her distress and heart problems are ongoing, yet she was able to submit her completed complaint form to us in November 2025, despite this. We cannot see that this was a barrier to her being able to bring us her completed complaint form sooner.

In summary 33. There remain three periods of delay, of four months, 13 months and 17 months, when Mrs B had received a final complaint response, knew she wanted to pursue her complaint and knew how to do so, but did not. We are left without good reason for these considerable periods of delay which we consider were within Mrs B’s abilities to act and avoid. This means we are left without any good reason to justify putting our time limit to one side.

34. We were very sorry to have learned of the reasons for Mrs B’s complaint. We do not underestimate the effort and energy it takes to raise and pursue complaints, particularly when they are about events that have caused such understandable upset and distress. We recognise how considerably Mrs B has been affected by the loss of her beloved husband, and we understand how much this complaint means to her.

35. It is important we consider and act within the law and we regret any further upset our decision may cause. We remain unaware of any barrier that prevented Mrs B from bringing the information we needed from her to our Office sooner, considering the significance of the overall delay. For the reasons explained, we do not see good reason to set aside our time limit. We hope this statement clearly explains the reasons why we will not be considering this complaint further.

1. We were very sorry to have learned of Mrs B’s concerns about her husband’s care. We recognise that what happened continues to cause Mrs B considerable ongoing upset and distress, and we extend our condolences to her.

2. We have decided not to consider Mrs B’s complaint further because it has come to us considerably outside of our time limit. We carefully considered the reasons Mrs B gave for this. We did not think there was sufficient reason to set our time limit aside.

3. We recognise and we are grateful for the time and effort that has gone into making this complaint. We are very sorry for any disappointment caused by our decision, which we explain in more detail below.