The Complaint Process: Delay, Deflection and Escalation

What I Did Next

After going through all of this — the Constitution, the clinical guidelines, the legal side, the meeting notes, and testing their justifications — I didn’t just sit with it.

I put it all together.

I wrote a formal complaint to the NHS, outlining everything I had found:

• The contradictions with the NHS Constitution
• The misalignment with clinical guidelines (NICE, WHO, GMC)
• The legal concerns around bodily autonomy and informed consent
• The lack of evidence behind their key claims (cost, regret)
• The inconsistencies in their own internal decision-making process

I referenced their own meeting notes. I cited legal precedent. I challenged their reasoning directly.

And I made one thing very clear — if they are restricting access to a legitimate medical option based on “regret,” they are effectively positioning themselves as responsible for people’s future feelings. Which is not how healthcare — or the law — works.

That complaint became a detailed, evidence-based challenge to the policy itself.

The NHS Complaints Process (And What Actually Happened)

What followed was not a meaningful investigation.

It was delay after delay, deflection and nothing more than empty words.

The NHS has a formal complaints process, with stated timelines for responses. I followed that process properly. I waited. I gave them time to respond.

And then I chased.

• Every time a deadline passed, I emailed.
• Every time I was told a response was coming, I followed up when it didn’t arrive.
• Again. And again. And again.

Months went by like this.

At some point, it stopped feeling like a process and started feeling like a wall.

I was corresponding with someone from the complaints team, and despite everything I had put forward — all the evidence, all the questions — nothing moved. No real engagement. No real answers. Just a system that seemed designed to absorb time and energy until you gave up.

And that’s the part I think people need to understand.

This process is exhausting by design.

It takes time. It takes persistence. And if you don’t keep pushing, nothing happens.

What became clear to me, eventually, is that there was no real intention to properly address what I had raised. No meaningful accountability. No willingness to revisit the decision.

That was the moment I realised:

If I wanted this to go anywhere, it wasn’t going to happen inside the NHS.

Seeking Justice Outside the System

That’s what led me to the Ombudsman.

Most people don’t know this, but there are independent bodies in the UK that exist specifically to investigate complaints when systems fail to do so themselves. These are called Ombudsman services, and they exist across different sectors:

• Financial Ombudsman (for banking, insurance, etc.)
• Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (for NHS and public services)
• And others, depending on the area

Their role is to step in after you’ve exhausted the internal complaints process , and to independently assess whether something has gone wrong.

• That’s important — you can’t go to them straight away.
• You have to go through the (exhausting) system first.
• Even if that system fails you.

So after months of chasing, waiting, and getting nowhere, I escalated my complaint to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) .

Why I Took This Further

T his was no longer just about me.

It would have been easier to walk away. To accept the outcome and move on.

But what I had uncovered made that impossible.

This policy doesn’t just affect one person — it affects every woman in the region who might want to make the same decision . And most of them will never even realise that this is something they can challenge. They won’t have the time, the knowledge, or the energy to go through what I went through.

And that’s exactly how systems like this continue.

There are many, many reasons why I kept going - keep reading and you'd find out.