Making a complaint

The Trust is committed to ensuring you receive a satisfactory response to complaints.  However, in view of the coronavirus (CoVID 19) outbreak in the UK, national guidance has been issued to the NHS to pause the NHS complaints process in order to allow all health care providers to concentrate their efforts on front-line duties and responsiveness to coronavirus. 

This means that complaints will be logged and reviewed, but will then remain open until further notice unless informal action can be taken to resolve concerns or the complainant chooses to withdraw their complaint.

Apart from certain urgent circumstances, no complaint investigations will commence at this time, and responses will not be sent for the time being.

We have taken the difficult decision to implement this change to our processes in order to allow our staff to fully concentrate on front-line services. This change to our process will be implemented for an initial period of three months, and will then be reviewed. 

A complaints case manager will contact complainants if we consider we are able to provide an informal response to any of the issues raised.

We have also been advised that the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman’s office (PHSO), which operates the second, independent stage of the NHS complaints procedure, have paused their work involving health complaints until further notice. This means that the PHSO will not accept new health complaints, nor progress existing cases where this requires contact with the health service. This situation is being kept under close review. 

Your care and treatment should not be negatively affected as a result of making a complaint. If you feel you are treated differently by staff as a result of making a complaint please notify us and these concerns will be escalated immediately.

Our pledge

The Patient Advice and Liaison Service (PALS) and Complaints department aims to support the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman’s principles of:

• Getting it right
• Being Customer focused
• Being open and accountable
• Acting fairly and proportionately
• Putting things right
• Seeking continuous improvement

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