NMC Complaints / Concerns / Referral communication trail

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June 7th, 2017 – Email sent to NMC (below) outlining that NMC had failed in a reasonable adjustment request in addition to refuting the ridiculous reasons NMC would not investigate the nurse.

Thank you for your letter dated 6th June 2017.  In response to this I contacted yourselves today by phone in order for various things to be established.

1.  I require a Subject Access Request in relation to this complaint.

2.  I require a Freedom Of Information request in relation to how many complaints you receive concerning Work Capability Assessments,  how many are investigated by yourselves and how many are not investigated.  Additionaly, I would like details on how many professionals you have taken action against in relation to DWP assessment complaints.

3.  During the phone call today, I was told by yourselves that the reason this complaint had not been progressed for investigation is that the nurse is not related to a practice, rather a company, namely CHDA.

Upon firstly enquiring with yourselves whether you’d be able to accept a complaint and investigate Work Capability Assessments, I was told yes.

4.  Your letter states “A full review of the allegations contained within your referral was undertaken by the Screening Legal Team” – however, upon myself questionning whether yourselves had listened to the recording and compared it against the medical written notes, I was told that the recording had not been listened to.
As this is the crux of my complaint, then I do not consider you have completed a full review.

5.  I was told several times during my 2 phone calls today that I need to put my complaint again in writing.  I was told to request that you listen to the oral recording of the assessment and compare this with the written report of the assessment.   In relation to this, I responded that I have already requested this.

6.  In the telephone call today, I was told a few times that I would need to put this additional complaint in writing.  I responded that under the Equality Act ideally you would have been able to escalate this complaint from my phone call.   After mentioning the Equality Act, you then decided that you would escalate my complaint from the phone call and did not require me to write.

Your letter states:
“I Understand you may be disappointed by this outcome,  However, the NMC can only investigate allegations made against nurses and midwives in cases where their conduct is likely to amount to their current fitness to practise being impaired.
My response:

A registered nurse conducting assessments is in my opinion not fit to practise as a medical professional when such practise includes numerous discrepancies between that of the recorded assessment and the written assessment.

Your letter states:
“When deciding whether an allegation is capable of impairing a registrant’s current fitness to practise, we take a number of factors into consideration.  These include when the events took place, the nature and seriousness of the allegation, the likelihood of repitition, any subsequent action taken by the employer or the person in question…”
My response:
The nature and seriousness of the allegation is that there are several discrepanicies (or lies, for want of a better word) between the oral recording and the written assessment.  I have already informed you of this but you have not investigated it despite the fact you say you have made a full review.

The likelihood of repetition in this instance is immense, this can clearly be seen from other people and media reports surrounding work capability assessments.

Your letter states:
“In the first instance this matter should be investigated by the DWP who are more suited to assess the efficacy of the assessment.
My response:

I am awaiting a reply from DWP Chief Executives Office, however, it is only approx 2 months past their timeline to respond.  Their lateness of 2 months to respond is not a long time in comparison to my previous complaint where I have waited 2 years for a response, and pales into insignificance when I am still awaiting several years for a response,  despite the fact that DWP say no records exist into my complaint several years ago,  but then decide to send me Subject Access Request detailing the complaints that they say do not exist.

A little like CHDA who 2 years ago said a complaint did not exist, yet asked me if i wanted it processed when I said it does exist and here is the proof of existance.

DWP are clearly not suited in this intstance.

Your letter states:
After considering all the facts in this case we concluded that there is insufficient evidence to support a regulatory concern.
My response:

Total maladministration on your part.  You have not considered all the facts, despite yourselves saying you completed a full review of the allegations.   In the phonecall made to yourselves today, it was stated that you did not listen to the oral recording of the assessment.   Therefore you have clearly not conducted a full review as your claim, neither have you considered all the facts as you claim.

Your letter states:
“…there is no evidence supporting the allegations to justify a full investigation”
My response:

The evidence is per my first contact with yourselves, ie – the oral recording of the assessment in comparison to the written report which were both conducted by the registered nurse.

Your letter states:
“It is unlikely for there to be any credible admissible evidence to support your concerns and further investigation is not deemed necessary”
My response:

If you had bothered to not treat my complaint in a derisory manner, you would have conducted the complaint investigation and realised that the credible admissible evidence is the oral recording of the assessment.

Your letter states:
“The allegations do not raise issues which would further engage the professional regulator and there is no evidence to highlight any patient harm, although we have noted the distress this incident has caused you.  Neither does this case raise any public protection concerns; the allegations do not engage the public interest and is not capable of amounting to professional conduct that would lead to impairment.
My response:

I totally refute everything you have stated here.   Public protection concerns come from members of the public who are having to endure work capability assessments from nurses who skew the results.  Impairment is when there is discrepancies between an oral recording and written report.

To reiterate my complaint:
Various discrepancies exist between the oral recoring of my work capability assessment and that of the written report – both conducted by a registered nurse.  This raises public protection concerns and public interest – despite your claims that it does not.

Any result of this complaint will be published on a website I own:  http://maladministration.co.uk/

 

The site is not yet published, however it is my intention to put all details of what I believe to be maladministration onto that site.

 

Kind regards,
Email sent June 14th 2017 outlining a second failed reasonable adjustment similar to the first one above, although this time requesting that my complaint is escalated should be made in writing and can’t be done on phone. 
During the course of this complaint, I had reason to speak on the telephone to yourselves, during the phone conversation I repeatedly asked for my complaint to be escalated.

I was told each time that I would need to put this in writing.

Only after I mentioned the Equality Act did your colleague then decide to escalate my complaint.  I consider this to be further maladministration.

Please will you also provide a copy of the telephone recording in relation to this maladministrative instance.

Kind regards,

Email sent June 16th 2017, this is in relation to my view that NMC are discriminating against myself, firstly through failing 2 reasonable adjustment requests and secondly through giving preposterous excuses as to why NMC could not proceed with the ftp referral.

The Equality Act 2010 legally protects people from discrimination in the workplace and in wider society. It replaced previous anti-discrimination laws with a single Act, making the law easier to understand and strengthening protection in some situations.I consider your actions of not investigating my complaint to be discrimination,  however, not only discrimination shown to myself but also discrimination shown to practically everyone else who has made a complaint to yourselves surrounding the indescrepancies in assessments of DWP.

Your actions of not investigating such complaints is in my opinion discriminatory and maladministration.

I have repeatedly given you good reasons as to why you should investigate, however you have chosen to ignore my reasons and request for you to govern yourselves accordingly and perform your perceived role.

This is not the first time your organisation has in my opinion broke the equality act.   The previous time was when I contacted yourselves by phone and your colleague told me repeatedly that I would have to escalate my complaint in writing.  After you ignored several of my requests to take the complaint by phone and escalate it, I was simply told it needed to be in writing.   The same colleague then miraculously decided that my complaint could be escalated and no need for me to put in writing as soon as I mentioned equality act.

Upon complaint to yourselves in relation to the above, I was told that staff had training surrounding the equality act.  However, despite such training you had failed several times until I had to inform yourselves of the appropriate legislation.

Now, turning back to my original complaint about your faliure to investigate – I consider your faliure to investigate a further breach of the equality act 2010.

I fail to see why a disabled person suffering with mental health problems needs to jump through hoops in order to get a complaint or referral dealt with by your organisation.
I also fail to see why a disabled person suffering with mental health problems needs to remind your organisation about its duties under law.

As discussed earlier, please escalate this to the final stage of your derisory complaints process.

Kind regards,
Letter received 16th June

I am writing in response to the complaint you have made in emails to the NMC dated 7 

June and 8 June 2017, and in telephone conversations with NMC staff between 7 June and 9 June 2017. 

Within your complaint emails you made a request for information under the Freedom of Information Act and a request for information under Section 7 of the Data Protection Act. Those requests are being dealt with by colleagues in the relevant team at the NMC and you will receive separate responses from them. 

You have complained that: 

You were told in a conversation on 7 June 2017 that your referral had not been progressed for investigation as the registrant “is not related to a practice, rather a company, namely CHDA.” This is contrary to what you were told when you first made an enquiry to the NMC in terms of whether we could deal with concerns about Work Capability Assessments. 

You were initially told by the Case Officer that you had to make a complaint to the NMC in writing. This was corrected after you mentioned the Equality Act. 

The crux of your complaint about the registrant is that her written assessment did not reflect the contents of the recorded assessment. You consider that registrant “made several lies and omitted key information.” You were advised in a telephone call with the NMC Case Officer that the recording had not been listened to before we decided to close the referral. You therefore do not consider we made a full review. 

You are unhappy with our decision to close this case and not progress it for reconsideration. You refute our reasoning that the referral does not raise any public protection concerns, that the allegations do not engage the public interest; and, that the allegations are not capable of amounting to professional misconduct which would lead to impairment. 

I trust I have summarised the terms of your complaint correctly. 

In respect of the first point, I apologise for any confusion that arose during your conversation with the Case Officer on 7 June 2017. The NMC has jurisdiction to consider and investigate the fitness to practise of any registered nurse, irrespective of the setting in which she or he practises. 

We are happy to accept complaints made verbally. However, our preference where possible is that complaints should be made in writing to ensure we understand in full the concerns being raised. 

You do not consider we made a full review of these allegations as we did not obtain and listen to the recording of the relevant assessment. In your original submission to us you said that “several key factors were discussed during the assessment which have either been ignored or omitted when writing the medical report form.” You consider that the registrant “cherry-picked the information” and that, had she not done so, the assessment would have had a different outcome. 

Registrants conducting Work Capability Assessments are doing so in accordance with strict Department of Work and Pensions criteria. Registrants are not required to utilise their nursing skills, either diagnostic or clinical. Their role is to assess a claimant’s condition in relation to their ability to carry out a range of day-to–day functions. 

The assessment recording was listened to by the CHDA medical advisor. CHDA provided us with a copy of the medical advisor‘s report which formed the basis of their complaint response to you dated 2 May 2017. It was entirely appropriate for the NMC to rely upon the report given the expertise of the medical advisor in this field. 

The NMC did not identify any public protection concerns in this case. You believe that the specific matters you referred to us about your own WCA do engage the public interest. Case law has indicated that pursuing a case on public interest grounds alone has a high threshold. Dishonesty is incompatible with the profession of nursing and is something which we always consider in our work. Here, there is no indication of dishonesty on the registrant’s part in her completion of the assessment. 

I therefore do not uphold your complaint. I appreciate you will be disappointed by this. If you do not agree with our decision not to progress your referral for full investigation, the option exists for you to have our decision judicially reviewed in a court of law. 

This letter represents Stage 2 of our corporate complaints handling process. If you are dissatisfied with the outcome of this Stage 2 response, you may appeal. A senior member of our corporate team will reconsider your complaints and the investigation. 

The outcome of Stage 3 is our final decision. 

Yours sincerely 

Email received July 20th 2017 in which NMC imply that my concerns had already been answered (they had not). They ignored concerns relating to the ftp referral as well as ignored my complaints surrounding 2 reasonable adjustment requests which they failed in.

Dear Mr Redacted.

Thank you for your email dated 22 June 2017. I have reviewed your complaint under Stage 3 of our corporate complaint procedure. As part of my investigations I have reviewed all of your correspondence regarding this complaint, including telephone notes.

Firstly I can see that you have had extensive communication with the Fitness to Practise (FtP) department and the crux of your complaint is that an FtP decision was taken to close the referral you made against Erica Bulpin. You have been in communication with *redacted*, Case Investigations Manager  for some time on this issue. Mr Redacted responded to your complaint at Stage 2 of our corporate complaints procedure by way of a letter dated 16 June 2017 and I can see from his letter that he has responded to the issues you have raised appropriately.

For clarity I shall explain that I have reviewed the exchange of emails between yourself and Mr Redacted from between 16 and 22 June 2017. I have also reviewed the emails you have sent to the [email protected] in and around the same dates. Your emails are in relation to the FtP decision regarding your referral. You discuss the Centre of Health and Disability Assessment (CHDA) at length and the use of evidence within our FtP investigation.  Given that the corporate complaints process is not an avenue to address concerns about FtP decisions I am not in a position to add anything more to the information already provided to you by Mr Redacted. I am sorry that this may be disappointing for you, however I am unable to comment on the FtP case and Mr Redacted has appropriately responded to any corporate concerns you raised.

I note that you mention that we are responding to complaints which have “arisen as a tangent to the original crux of the complaint.” I am sorry you feel that way, however I must reiterate that the corporate complaints process is not an avenue to review or amend any FtP decision.

The corporate complaints process in relation to this complaint has now been exhausted. I am aware that the Data Protection Team have responded separately to your Subject Access Request. You should be receiving your response shortly if you have not already received it.

Kind regards
Complaints Manager
Nursing and Midwifery Council
23 Portland Place, London, W1B 1PZ

The NMC in their above response completely ignored my FTP concerns in addition to ignoring my concerns that 2 reasonable adjustment requests had failed. They also imply that my concerns had been answered elsewhere (they had not).

At this point, NMC have totally failed to address my concerns surrounding the FTP referral, in turn they provided further preposterous reasons to not investigate. It should be pointed out that the reasons provided to me were the same reasons why PSA intervened previously in relation to DWP linked referrals.
Additionally, NMC have failed to address the 2 failed reasonable adjustment requests. Their only response being is that they would prefer things are in writing. However, they did not take into consideration that these were very simple things, 1) To look at the medical report evidence,  2)  To escalate my complaint.
Despite informing NMC of my mental health on these two occasions and that it is exacerbated in dealing with this DWP issue, it should have ideally not required me to make simple requests in writing or by letter. Their failing to do so on two separate occasions is in my opinion discrimination as no regard was given to my mental health. (It was only when I quoted Equality Act on the 2 occasions did NMC then state they would make a note. However, it transpires that on both occasions they failed to make a note as stated. Even after describing (in my opinion valud medical) reasons as to why simple request should be taken by NMC over the phone, it should not take someone to assert their rights under the Equality Act as a reasonable adjustment).

Email received August 13th, 2020:

Dear Redacted,

I am writing to you further to our email on 29 July 2020, in which we explained that we were aiming to provide you with the outcome by 14 August.

Your case has now been referred to a decision maker in the team and we are currently in the process of finalising the decision. This should be complete by the end of next week. We are sorry that we will not be able to send you the decision this week but as soon as the decision is finalised we will write to you.

We appreciate your patience and we are sorry for the delays with the review of your case.

Yours sincerely

Redacted
Team Assistant Professional Regulation
020 7046 7910
Nursing and Midwifery Council

Email sent September 1st, 2020

Consent was provided within this email. NMC replied directly to this email so it can not deny it did not receive consent in this instance. Furthermore, consent was provided previously.

Hello,

Thank you for the information you provided to me some days ago. I apologise that I have not been able to reply sooner..
I had thought that I was awaiting the outcome for the fitness to practise referral concerning “Nurse BP”.
Seemingly, it turns out that I am no further forward at this late stage in time than I was at the time of making a referral to yourselves as you now state that I need to provide you with consent.
Consent, a covering letter and copies of documents from DWP showing the nurses falsifying medical records, this envelope of information were sent to you via recorded or registered post in February 2019..
For the sake of clarity, I provide consent.
I fail to see why NMC now implies it has not received my consent. I can understand that errors occur, however fail to see how multiple errors can occur.. At no point during my previous communications with yourselves via phone was it mentioned that consent was needed. I have, in my opinion, done everything I possibly can in order for the referral to progress. I have reiterated to many different people in phone calls concerning the evidence I have, I have reiterated the same within emails – and now you need consent puts me no further forward then I was at the start of this referral to yourselves last year.
If as the NMC now states it is only investigating Nurse EB (Erica Bulpin) and has taken months to provide me with a conclusion that it can not investigate because said nurse is no longer registered, then this obvious information should have been told to myself at the start of the investigation. Afterall, literally anyone can search a RN on NMC register; given the fact that NMC now thinks its only investigating Erica Bulpin it would have been prudent if one of the many NMC staff I have communicated with so far actually did this themselves. It would have saved myself and yourselves a lot of needless wasted time. It would have also paved the way sooner for someone within NMC to realise that I have been chasing up the fitness to practise referral in relation to Bethan Parry, NurseBP
To reiterate, yet again:
Bethan Parry is a registered nurse working on behalf of CHDA / DWP conducting work capability assessments and therefore is dealing with vulnerable people during the course of her duties. A work capability assessment  was recorded and  transcribed by the DWP.  The DWP were able to pick out several elements of information which were not carried forward onto the written medical report.
The medical report written by NurseBP did not show any resemblance to that of the actual assessment which was recorded. This is in my opinion falsifying medical information. The nurse concerned ignored all applicable medical elements in relation to mental health. Not only did she ignore all medical element, she also fabricated information.
You have already been sent the document from DWP which shows some (but not all) of the medical information the nurse omitted from the medical report (yet was present in recording of assessment). This is in my opinion falsifying medical information. I can understand small errors, however the multitude of errors made by the nurse throughout this one assessment can not possibly be attributed as small errors nor an isolated incident. Arguably, it could be attributed as multiple isolated incidents.
The nurse lied. The nurse lied on purpose. The nurse lied on multiple occasions. This is her job. To demonise and ignore vulnerable people.
I have documents from DWP showing the lies.
I can also ask my own medical health team to write a letter as they also were made aware of my complaint and took interest in it spending a  great deal of time within the surgery looking at the document showing the nurses lies.
I fail to see what I need to do to get someone within NMC to actually investigate this. Not only have you wasted my time so far in me chasing up this referral for you to inform me of previous information (consent) which puts me in no further position now than at the start of the referral itself. I have endured many telephone conversations with NMC into addition to many emails, these involving many many many many different people.
To have to reiterate the referral constantly, explaiinging to different people, for it to be transferred again, to wait for a conclusion and that conclusion is on a totally different referral to what I have been chasing up is tiring.
You have documented evidence from DWP which is a transcript of an oral recording – this shows Nurse BP make several mistakes in not accurately recording key medical information. Infact, not accurately, she failed to record any applicable relevant medical information whatsoever.
DWP paid a company to transcribe the oral recording into text, it is this document which has been sent to you previously. DWP picked out several key medical elements from the assessment which had not been recorded by the nurse.
Can I please request someone within NMC to actually listen to the oral recording of the assessment / or read the transcription supplied by DWP and compare to the written medical report. If someone within NMC does this, then NMC will clearly see that the nurse has deliberately falsified medical information. You will then have evidence that the nurse is unfit for her profession and take appropriate action in order to prevent her from dealing with vulnerable members of society again.  Either something like this, or, another preposterous excuse for reason of delaying the investigation / complaints / referral would be appreciated.
Please note, the above, whilst being a complaint (showing the incompetence of NMC and its continued gross maladministration) is not a complaint on any of its staff. Its staff are all professional, polite and patient in explaining any questions I have. The complaint is in relation to the actual system itself, months and months and months of waiting and communicating and chasing up a specific case all to be told that I now need to provide consent to something which I have already provided to you around 19 months or so ago.
What NMC now needs to do:
  1. Investigate my claim that the nurse lied several times on purpose. This can be done by listening to the oral recording of assessment and comparing it to the medical report. It can also be done by reading a DWP document which is a transcription of the assessment and compare it to the medical notes.
  2. Once NMC has established the nurse has failed on several key medical elements in the recording of medical information, then it should take appropriate action. Ideally, nurse should be struck off as her failings were deliberate. It was not one isolated failing, it was several failings. 
  3. In the event you’re unable to follow the actions outlined in point number 1, then I will await your reasoning as to why you can not investigate. If I do not understand nor am in agreement with your reasoning then I may refer your answer to the PSA. 
The above complaint is against the incompetence and maladministration shown by NMC, it is not against any staff member. All NMC have been polite and professional during phone calls and have taken extreme patience in explaining answers to my questions. The complaint is against the unfit for purpose process you have in actually dealing with fitness to practise referrals; the length of times involved and the amount of people involved which changes, – you have in essence spent more time communicating to me about updates of a case than you have in the actual investigation. — This is a fact that can not be denied…. for if you actually investigated i would have been told months ago regarding NurseEB is no longer registered!!!!! You would have also mentioned consent, in the case of the other referral. These facts alone show that the NMC has literally spent more time telling me about the referral and keeping me updated that it has in any attempt at investigating it or even have a basic understanding of it.

Reiterate again:  Nurse lied. Documents from DWP show nurse lied on multiplie of occasions.  (By lies, i mean failed to record any key medical information and fabricate a report to show a person perfectly healthy when the reality was opposite. — This is what you should be investigating. I provide you with consent of disclosure. I also provide you with consent to contact DWP in relation to any further information you require.

 

Thanks,

The above correspondence shows that NMC essentially lied to me claiming it had made a full investigation, yet then admitted to not even bothering to look at the evidence I had sent to them. I requested many times that they do so.

Incidentally, the above correspondence highlights 2 reasonable adjustment requests which failed and NMC lack of substantive response to this.

THE ABOVE IS HISTORICAL CORRESPONDENCE – showing NMC had failed to supply reasonable adjustment requests, failed to deal in a complaint surrounding failed reasonable adjustment requests. It also shows NMC essentially lied to me claiming it had made a full investigation when the reality is they had not even bothered to look at the evidence I had sent to them.

Below correspondence is from 2020 onwards:

Email received September 24th, 2020 – requiring I now send in a signed consent form (despite phone conversations saying I had already provided consent previously, in addition to providing consent in email NMC had received previously)

Dear Mr Redacted
Thank you for your call today.
I haven’t been able to locate any documents sent to us March/April 2019. If you would like to resend these to me by email I will ensure they are added to your case. I’m sorry that I’ve not been able to locate these documents – I understand our complaints team are currently dealing with your complaint and I have escalated this concern to them to look into as well.

As we discussed, if you are able to send me the signed consent form we will be able to look into your concerns about Nurse P.

Yours sincerely

Redacted
Decision Review Support Manager
Professional Regulation
020 7681 5278

Email received 13th October, 2020

13 October 2020 

Dear Redacted

Response to your complaint  

Thank you for taking the time to talk with Redacted, Head of Quality of Decision  Making. I am sorry that you are unhappy with our service. 

I have looked into these issues under our corporate complaints process. This included a  review of the cases you raised with us. Hafsa Rajani, Customer Enquiries and  Complaints Officer called you on 16 September 2020 to discuss your complaint in more  detail with you. 

For ease of reference I have addressed the concerns you raised in turn.

Consent in case relating to Nurse Parrys 

I am sorry you are unhappy that we closed this case due to not receiving your consent  to share your information. You believe you did provide consent. We received your  concerns about this case on 14 November 2018. On the initial referral form, you said that we could not disclose information about you as the referrer. In order to gain clarity  on this, your Case Officer wrote to ask you to complete a consent to disclose form on  three occasions. From my review I cannot see your response to these requests which is  why we closed the case. 

I can appreciate why this is concerning for you. You said that even if you did not give  such consent, the concerns were so serious that we should have investigated them  regardless. I have identified that we can do more to clarify how we manage the issue of consent in cases such as this. In order to ensure that we conduct a robust and balanced  investigation, we feel it is almost always appropriate to inform a nurse or midwife who  has raised the concerns about them. This allows the person in question to provide a  more accurate response to the allegations. I have raised this with our Screening  Manager to ensure that we are managing people’s expectations about this in a  transparent way. 

Redacted, Decision Review Support Manager, wrote to you on 24 September  2020 confirming that if you could return the consent form, we will take this case forward. 

Documents from the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) 

You are unhappy that you contacted us several times about documents that you sent in  March and April 2019 from the DWP. I have reviewed both of these cases and have not  found documents that you had sent us from the DWP. In Charlotte’s email to you of 24  September 2020, she asked you to re-send the documents to her at  [email protected] so that she can consider them in full. 

Outcome of Screening Reconsideration in relation to Nurse Bulpin 

I am sorry that you are unhappy with the outcome of the screening reconsideration of  this case. In our letter to you dated 15 September 2020, we let you know we had completed our reconsideration of this case and concluded that we needed to make further enquiries about the concerns you raised. The Case Assessor noted that you may  have further relevant information to provide in this case. 

When we made those further enquiries, we identified that Nurse Bulpin is no longer on  our register. As nurse Bulpin is not currently a registered nurse, we cannot make her the  subject of a live Fitness to Practise investigation. This means that we are unable to  complete our investigation into Nurse Bulpin’s practice at the moment. With that said,  please be assured that we have flagged her inactive registration for an investigation  should she apply to re-join our register at any point in the future. We will, of course,  inform you if this happens. 

I am sorry you did not receive formal notification of the outcome of the reconsideration.  We sent this to you by email on 15 September and I have attached a copy to this  response. This document is password protected. We will send the password in a separate email. 

GDPR request and Subject Access Request 

Our Information & Data Requests team have advised that you submitted 2 requests to  them which were both responded to: 

Freedom of Information request (ref NMC-01422-F7J9M2). Received on 12 September  2020 and responded to on 14 October 2020. 

Subject Access request (ref NMC-01349-S9W3C8). Received on 5 September 2020  and responded to on 12 September 2020.

I’m sorry that you feel as though your follow up requests were ignored. I asked the team  if they had received any requests from you in June or July 2020 and they have no  record of anything further from you. If there are any other requests which you wish to  make, please email foi&[email protected] 

Thank you again for getting in touch. Please contact our Customer Enquiries and  Complaints team at [email protected] if you need any further clarification. 

Yours sincerely
Redacted
Senior Enquiries and Complaints Officer

The above email does not address concerns of investigating the wrong nurse. The email also lists 4 dates, each date is incorrect. Due to these inaccuracies, I was led to believe that a data breach had occurred whereby unauthorised people had hold of my data.
Email sent, October 14th, 2020

Hello,
Thank you for your response in addition to your patience shown in this matter during our phone conversation yesterday.
Urgent Matter – NMC Data breach 
Your response to me stating that my data request had been sent to me on September 16th is alarming given the fact that I have not yet received it.  I would appreciate an urgent reply in regards to the following so I can try ascertain where exactly my data is in which you sent, or where it is probable to be, alternatively some idea as to what happened with the data.
  1. Was the data sent to my postal address? If so, please can you provide details of exactly where it was sent, any receipts you may have or proof of delivery would be appreciated.
  2. Was the data sent to my email address?  If so, please can you provide a forwarded copy of the email (including its previous headers) again in order so I can try and see what happened previously, why it had failed and if under another eventuality you sent the data to the wrong person.
If you have sent this via post or courier, it is missing – essentially someone unauthorised has access to my data.
If you have sent via email, as I have not received any email with my request then I can only assume it has been sent to another recipient. If there were a problem in my google-email accepting your email then you would have received a “mailer-daemon” notification from google and this would be continued to be sent until your email servers accept the email. Therefore, in either scenario, whether you have sent the data via post or email, the data is lost, someone else has access to my data. Having had a quick look to see your email provider, I see it is Mimecast who would have standard and probably enhanced systems in place to ensure emails are simply not lost. They do not report any downtime in their services on the date in question. In light of this, under either scenario, my data is currently lost.
Please treat the above as an urgent matter as I do not appreciate my private and personal information to be lost somewhere and not even know where it has been lost.
Please note that the above can be treated as a complaint, it should also ideally be treated as a data breach. I would appreciate if this element is also investigated by a Data Protection Officer and the outcome of said investigation is provided to me.
I believe that under GDPR legislation you have 72 hours in which to respond to the above. However, I would appreciate any immediate notification of where my data is.
Should I not receive an email response within the next few hours in relation to exactly where my data is, then I will endeavour to chase this up via phone.
Now turning to your recent response to me, sent & received yesterday (13th October 2020) .
You write the following: 
 
This included a review of the cases you raised with us. Hafsa Rajani, Customer Enquiries and Complaints Officer called you on 16 September 2020 to discuss your complaint in more detail with you.
My response: During this phone call, itt was discussed that I was still waiting for my data request, I mentioned GDPR and possible legal action due to your repeated falling to provide me with the data)  In the above phone call I reiterated my complaint that I am still waiting for my data, the subject access request. However, you write that this was sent to me on 12th September.
This begs the question of my phone conversation on 16 September where I explained quite clearly I am still waiting for my Subject Access Request as to why I was not told that it was sent to me 4 days previously.
Regardless of this, the fact that I had clearly stated I am still waiting for the data subject access request 4 days after you claim it was sent to me should have paved the way for further action by yourselves.
It is absolutely ridiculous that in the course of the NMC dealing with the elements raised in the complaint that I have had 3 points of contact who are dealing with the complaint. Despite having 3 points of contact all directly related to this complaint, despite my reiterations to all that no data request had been received nothing has so far as yet happened.
 
You write the following:
 
From my review I cannot see your response to these requests which is why we closed the case.
My response: Consent and evidences were sent to yourselves around March or April 2019, I am still in the process of trying to find recorded delivery slip in an effort to trace.
I can not find any response from yourselves in which you inform me that the referral case was closed. I consider this to be maladministration, to close a referral without notifying. If however you did provide a response, please provide a copy of the response in addition to an explanation as to then why in all occurrences after this response did nobody notify me of the closure of the referral despite my many communications in trying to both assist yourselves and chase up the outcome of the referral.
It may very well be the case that you did notify me that you had closed the referral and I had forgotten. However, in this instance the fact that I have sent consent both via paper and email in addition to evidences via email as well as contacting yourselves on numerous occasions in order to find out about the referral – given all of my actions, even if you had informed me you had closed the referral then my further repeated communication to yourselves would clearly suggest that I was not aware of this.
The NMC has been informed that DWP have produced a document of some (but not all) of the nurses lies (albeit they did not use the word lies).
The falsifaication of medical information should be investigated by NMC as it is within the publics interest to be protected against such practices as shown by the nurse.
The course of action in this instance shown by NMC,  after informing NMC about the nurse who has lied, that documents exist showing she had lied,  that oral recordings exist showing she has lied on purpose, that independent medical advice exists plus records from my own medical health team who took an interest in the case – all of the opinon of falsifying medical information had existed.
Despite the above, plus despite the fact I have alraeedy provided consent to yourselves via post in 2019,  I have also supplied consent to yourselves via email in August 2020, despite these things you still require a paper form for consent to be provided in order for you to investigate.
In relation to Nurse Erica Bulpin, you write the following: 
I am sorry you did not receive formal notification of the outcome of the reconsideration. We sent this to you by email on 15 September and I have attached a copy to this
response. 
My response:  I have never informed anyone that I had not received the outcome of this reconsideration. Given the fact that my complaint centered around 3 main areas, these are:
  1. Why it had taken NMC over 18 months (nearly 2 years) to tell me that my chasing up of a referral was at cross purposes, I was enquiring about Nurse Parry whilst NMC was investigating Nurse Bulpin, essentially why it had taken this considerable length of timewasting in investigating the wrong person. It was another manager named “Ade” who brought this to light, she informed me of this problem.
  2. Leading on from the above and communication and correspondence with Ade, I requested a subject access request and repeatedly reminded the NMC that Ihave not received this.
  3. The issue of safeguarding, (see previous email for issue). This is it is my opinion that NMC are not adhering to safeguarding as are placing numerous barriers in my way in order to proceed with the referral. An example of the most recent barriers is this complaint email where none of my complaints have actually been addressed. Examples of other barriers is faliing to provide information on several occasions, failing to investigate and taking nearly 2 years to tell me you’re investigating the wrong person and you need me to provide consent – despite the fact that I have already provided consent via royal mail in 2019 and via email in 2020.
For you to say that I said I did not receive notification of the outcome of my reconsideration (which I have never said) would suggest that you do not have a full understanding of the complaint as the complaints stem from said correspondence you state I said I had not received.  . As discussed with your colleague on September 16th, I shall reiterate the conversation, paraphrased here:  “I dont wish to sound rude or belittle your work but I am really not interested in your complaint response to me, I do have a multitude of complaints which I am formulating and you will receive these in the future. As for now the only 3 things I am interested in as a response to the complaint is number 1 – my data subject access request,  number 2 – why it has taken NMC nearly 18 months to tell me it was investigating wrong person (cross purposes despite my chasing up).  number 3 – the ossie of safeguarding, NMC is aware I have government documents showing a nurse has lfalsified medical information,  NMC is aware that my referral concerns this and the nurses lies in addition to the fact that the nurse is still working with vulnerable people, yet, despite this, despite the fact that its taken nearly 2 years for NMC to tell me consent needs to be given from myself, despite the fact I have already said consent was provided to yourselves last year via royal mail and this year in August 2020 via emaiil, you still require a physical form to proceed.”
This is a paraphrased version of what was discussed with your colleague on September 16th, none of which has been answered in your response to me.
Whilst I appreciate your response to me in addition to your patience during phone call yesterday, none of your response addresses the 3 elements of my complaint. The 3 elements have been reiterated previously to other people who were dealing with this complaint as outlined above. These are:
1. Failed data subject access request.
2. Issue of NMC safeguarding and its insisting I have to send a physical paper consent form and can not accept consent via email.  Regardless of this, even if i did not supply consent then given the nature of my referral and the evidence from DWP to show nurse is unfit for purpose should trigger the NMC to adopt safeguarding policy to investigate regardless whether consent is given or not in an effort to protect the vulnerable members of society which NMC is aware the nurse is responsible for.
3.Why its taken NMC 18 months to ltell me it was investigating the wrong nurse (cross purpose) despite me sending evidences and chasing these matters up via phone calls and emails.
Your response to 1) Failed date request has led to a GDPR data breach investigation.
Your response to 2) Whilst you attempted to answer the issue of safeguarding, it just paved the way for further concern from your reply. , ie, why more regard is placed over disclosure than that of the public interest and protection of vulnerable public.
Your response to 3)  Attaching a letter from Ade does not adequately explain why it has taken 18 months or so of me waiting and chasing up a referral, quoting the nurses name etc for you to ignore my endeavours in chasing up this area.
 
As stated to your colleague, these are the only areas I am interested in – they are concerns, more than complaints.
I intend to send you a comprehensive complaint at a future date. For now, I am only interested in the above 3 points in addition to the very concerning matter of a data breach, that is, my data has been sent to someone or has gone missing.
Either you sent data by post or courier which has not been received by myself,  or you have sent data to an email recipient which has not been received by myself. This requires urgent investigation, as said earlier I will contact youselves later today in order to ascertain exactly how this data breach occurred and to find out where my data is. 
 
I reiterate again – the matter of the data breach is highly concerning to myself. I would appreciate a reply in regards to this and full information as to where the data request was sent to. As stated, I believe you have 72 hours under GDPR legislation to respond to this data breach, however, given the serious nature and personal information involved then I would appreciate a reply sooner.
 
 
Kind regards
As can be seen from the above email, I referenced elements of my complaint in which the NMC has failed to respond to.

Further email in relation to the data breach and my added stress and anxiety caused by NMC incompetence or maladministration is below.

Email sent October 16th, 2020

Hello,

In previous email to yourselves,  I stated I was alarmed at the fact the entirety of my personal data was currently either lost or in the hands of the wrong recipient. This is due to yourselves informing me on October 14th that you had already sent me a data request on September 12th
Obviously I do not appreciate the fact that my data is now essentially lost. I have therefore asked you to send me details as to how you sent me the data and proof of sending in order for me to investigate further this data breach.
Two days ago, after a sleepless night in which I wrote yourselves a lengthy email in addition to contacting yourselves early morning 08.00 to try and find some idea as to who has my data and to speak with a data protection officer, the call handler told me that a note would be made of this and followed up by her managers that same day, ensuring I would receive the call back. The actions of the call handler evidently appreciated my stress in regards to my lost private data as said my request would be monitored by her manager to ensure a call back would be made. Despite the reassurance provided – no phone call was returned. I then contacted yourselves to find out why and to request help, my call transferred to some manager, I explained that I am distressed due to the fact that NMC have essentially caused a data breach with my private information and that I required information as to where this data could possibly be. Whilst the manager was polite, no help was provided. Such questions asked, examples being: would it be tracked via courier, do you send via courier or via email, even general questions such as these could not be answered.
Nobody had the courtesy of responding to my email yesterday despite the fact that they were sent to multiple recipients.  You were informed I was distressed at the data breach and I required immediate information as to where the data could be. Not even basic generic information could be provided such as was it sent by post or email. Even the call handler assuring me that action would be taken for my request to speak with data protection and that her managers would monitor and follow up this request failed.
Yesterday, I was awaiting information from yourselves, email or phone call. Around 16:00 I contacted yourselves to try find out further information regarding the data breach. I asked to speak with a data protection officer. The call handler tried different contacts but no answer. Eventually, my call was transferred to someone, they answered the phone with a “hello”, I then asked if they are a DPO or their position (cant remember which), the reply to me was along the lines of “oh **** off” and the transferred call was then terminated.  Leading on from this, I contacted yourselves again and spoke with a new call handler and another new manager ( (Cant remember which) in regards to my previous phone call and being told to “**** off”,   i just said “something off”, I did not say the original word that was told to me. Upon asking, I was told that there is no call recordings of phone calls. I would like to ascertain whether this is correct or not. If recording exists, then please raise this issue as an additional complaint.  The purpose of the phone call was obviously try and ascertain exactly where my data is, whether its sent by courier / post, or sent via email. I was reassured by the manager that someone would call me back tomorrow (16th) in relation to my data breach concerns.
Please treat the above as a complaint in regards to NMC failing to provide reassurances in a reasonable amount of time to help alleviate my stress and concerns regarding the data breach. 
 
Now turning back to your previous correspondence to me, your most recent response to my complaints.

I pointed out to you previously that none of my complaint had been answered. Whilst NMC did respond to the complaint, the response contained nothing of any substance. The 3 main issues were data request, safeguarding concerns and why it had taken NMC 18 months approx to investigate the wrong nurse (despite me chasing up the referral, it took 18 months for you to tell me there was a cross purpose!!!!!)

Whilst I appreciate the response to my complaint was provided in addition to the patience shown by the complaints manager in speaking about complaint, I do feel that none of the complaints have been responded to in substance. I have provided examples / reasons previous as to why in previoius email. In addition to the points that remain unanswered (the entirety of my complaint!!!!!!) the other point you chose to answer which was not a concern of mine is also incorrect and does not provide any substantive answer, nor for that matter any answer of fact.
You write to me on 13th October 2020 to inform me the FOI request was responded to on 14 October 2020.
Whilst I admire your ability to predict the future, unfortunately you were wrong, it was not received on 14 October. NMC did send me a FOI some weeks ago, however as explained via phone call it was an incomplete request. I also refer you to email I sent concerning this matter approx 2 months ago. An excerpt from the email is as follows:
In May 2020, I made a FOI request in respect of the outcomes of the cases which were subjected to Professional Standards Authority intervention.  The information provided to me related to PIP assessments, I did not make a request for PIP assessment statistics, my request was clear and concise in its aim.
Leading on from above, I requested information from the records which included several keywords in which I provided.  This information was not provided to me. You replied that you could not provide the information since it is not hardcoded into any field. I had already preempted your response previously by requesting information performed via a keyword search. 
I do hope substantive responses are given to my concerns and complaints.  I do not want to appear ungrateful nor rude, however so far the actions of NMC in dealing with my concerns and complaints have done nothing other than to cause further stress, worry, alarm, sleepless nights etc – in the knowledge that someone somewhere has the entirety of my data.
Where is my data???
 
Irate and sleepless,
Redacted
NMC still failed to respond despite my obvious stress and anxiety caused as a direct result of their incompetence leading me to believe my data was in the hands of other unauthorised unknown people. 
Email received from NMC legal apologising for error and distress caused in relation to the data breach. I responded as below.

The above communication showing incompetence from NMC in their response. Such incompetence is telling me that something has already happened (data request) and it has happened in the future. Or perhaps in relation to another complaint and in same response, they informed me of another date which was incorrect. However, their incompetence in this element caused me considerable stress and anxiety as I was led to believe that unauthorised people had hold of my data. Despite a multitude of requests via phone and email to ascertain where my data was, who had it, nobody could be bothered to provide me with any information. Not even generic information. I then pointed out that my data breach concerns is causing obvious stress and anxiety and requested a reasonable adjustment that someone contact me the same day, this failed, it also failed the next day and the day after that! To put it simply, nobody within NMC could enlighten me as to where my data was despite a multitude of requests and my obvious stress and anxiety caused in this matter.

Email sent, October 20th, 2020

Hello,

Thank you for your email.

You write:  “I understand that you have since received an email rom Graham Ostle on the same date explaining that there had been a mistake in the letter sent to you on 13 October 2020 which may have led to a misunderstanding and confirming that there has been no data breach. I apologise for this error and for any distress caused.

My response: This did lead to a misunderstanding, not may have led.  Graham Ostle replied stating that the error was from a typo. A typo signifies a typing error. Given the fact that within the complaint response from NMC I was provided with 4 different dates and each of these 4 dates were wrong, then this would signify incompetence / maladministration.  I can appreciate that human error can occur, however, when the error covers inaccurate dates on each of the 4 dates mentioned then it can hardly be considered to be a “typo” as the NMC attempts to claim. This is clearly incompetence and maladministration.

You write:  “I hope that this has answered your questions and that you no longer feel the need to take any further action.”
My response: Unfortunately, this has raised to more questions. Examples are:

  1. Upon contacting the NMC via a lengthy email in which I discussed the data breach and my immediate alarm due to the data breach (lenghty email wrote throughtout a sleepless night and was sent to you early morning)  In addition to the email, I followed it up via a phone call at 08.00 in which I contacted NMC and request immediate assistance explaining I was alarmed at the data breach.  The call handler I spoke with remembered my previous phone calls (prior to data breach) in which I requested to speak with a DPO in regards to a Subject Access Request you have failed to provide despite constant reminders, they were aware that no return phone calls were made and therefore told me this element would be monitored by her managers to ensure a phone call from a DPO was made to me. The purpose of the phone call at this point was to ascertain the extent of the data breach, where it was probable to be.  Needless to say, no phone call was returned to me in despite of the above.  Additionally no information was provided to me in regards to the data breach on this day, this is despite the fact that the manager who had answered my complaint was working that day. Also, nobody else could be bothered to contact me.
  2. Leading on from the above, I contacted yourselves later that day to explain that nobody had contacted me (again) in addition to attempting to finding out further information regarding the breach.  I spoke with another manager who could not answer my questions in reagrds to the data breach. They could not even answer generic general questions as to whether it was likely the data was sent to me via post or email. Neither could they find anyone else within the NMC to adequately deal with my concerns – this is after I had said I am alarmed and stressed at the data breach.
  3. The following day, I contacted yourselves again in order to find out further information. Again, I requested to speak with a DPO or someone competent enough to let me know further information about my data.  Again, this was not forthcoming, no information was given to me. Clearly, at this point, (if it were not already made clear the previous day) that I was suffering with stress and alarmed at the thought of my data being missing. The distress caused on this second day was not appeased, again, nobody within the NMC could provide me with any information.  Again, as with previous instances, no phone call was returned to me from a DPO or someone competent enough to deal with my concerns.
  4. Another manager contacted me via phone later during this day, (Emma), she was unable to explain the missing data but assured me that I would receive a phone call from a DPO.
  5. The following day, the same manager contacted me again (Emma). She mentioned that data request was sent to me in September 2020, that this information was supplied by a DPO who would be contacting me later that same day via phone as well as supplying the subject access request  which I have been constantly reminding yourselves of your inability to discharge your legal obligations in this element.
    I told Emma that her information which came from a DPO was incorrect because approx 2 hours before her phone call I had discovered that you sent me a request on September 16th 2019 and not September 16th 2020. She passed this information onto the DPO who then responded to me in a letter which I have copied to yourself as below.
  6. Despite the assurances from Emma saying that I would receive a phone call from DPO in addition to that I would receive my DSAR later that day, neither happened. No phone call returned (at least NMC are consistent in this) and no DSAR supplied.
  7. I have left a multitude of messages asking for DSAR to your FOI team via their telephone number during the last few weeks, all of which unanswered. Even call handlers who recognised my alarm and distress at the data breach told me that it would be monitored by managers to ensure I receive phone call.

The above simply describes NMC lack of regard into my alarm and stress concerning data breach. It also highlights the incompetence of NMC in this instance due to a failing of being told constantly someone would contact me with no contact being made.

Concerning legal action, I wrote to you previously with a half baked attempt with a pre action protocol letter before action. As no data breach had occurred in respect of my missing data then obviously this matter will no longer proceed as my own investigations showed that the probability there had not been any unauthorised disclosure of my data. Note – my own investigations revealed this, not NMC investigation.  After all of this time being alarmed and distressed at the thought of my data being in the hands of unauthorised recipients, the only response from NMC was derisroy, claiming data was sent to me in 2020 – and this claim being made by DPO and manager, until the time I pointed out my own investigations to the manager.

Therefore, in light of the above, as no legal action is planned in respect of a data breach that unauthorised recipient/s had my data, the previous letter before claim sent to you – you can choose to disregard as I will not be pursuing legal action in respect of unauthorised disclosure of the data, it is my intention to proceed now instead with a claim concerning a data breach of inaccurate data which led me to believe a data breach of information to unknown recipient/s had occurred.

I do intend to still pursue a legal claim against yourselves in respect of a data breach. This data breach concerns inaccurate data.  As discussed earlier, the inaccurate data stems from a complaint response to me from NMC.  Within the response, 4 dates had been provided to me – each of these dates were incorrect. Not one, but four!!!! 

The inaccurate data led me to believe that unauthorised and unknown recipient/s had my private personal data and that I was of this opinion up until the point of my own investigations as NMC investigation was futile and also again inaccurate. 

The legal action in this instance may be pursued either by myself, or, more likely my own solicitors would pursue this since they are quite keen to take on the case.

This would be on a no-win no-fee arrangement. The same solicitors are already pursuing a data breach case against DWP who informed my father of the complaint despite my father providing his date of birth and NI number as security.  The same solicitors are also preparing to pursue a case against CHDA again for data breach and inaccurate data.

Dealing with my solicitor is tiresome. I am trying to overcome mental health illness and dealing with incompetence from DWP and CHDA does not help this.  It is why I referred the matter of the nurses lies to yourselves. However, despite this, it has taken yourselves 2 years plus to inform me you had been investigating the wrong nurse, as we were at cross purposes.

Apologies, I digress.

I do hope that you are able to treat this case with the merit it deserves and recognise that due to further errors / maladministration /. incompetence shown by the NMC had led me to be alarmed and distressed.  Despite my endeavours to contact yourselves repeatedly to try and find out information in regards to my missing data and it being in the hands of unauthorised recipients, no help or advice was provided.
The actions, or, rather inactions of the NMC in this instance is abysmal. Nobody could appease me nor provide me with any information.

Infact, the information you were going to supply me with at the end of the investigation was again inaccurate,  as was told data was sent to me in 2020 = i had to point out it was sent to me in 2019.

It is quite likely that I will accept my solicitors terms of business and sign and send back their consent form in order for them to proceed with legal action against yourselves. 

Please note, as soon as this form is received and sent back to the solicitors, after this stage I would not be able to stop legal action as I would then be forced to pay the solicitors fees / costs. 

In light of the above, hopefully NMC can recognise its diststorous repeated courses of actions and provide compensation in respect of my distress due to the maladministration and incompetence shown by your colleagues. 

Please also note that it is my intention to proceed with legal action against yourselves and that as soon as I accept, sign and return the solicitors terms of business then I am unable to stop this legal action unless I pay their fees / costs for work already completed.  

In respect of the above, I hope that the NMC can recognise its repeated failings, recognise the alarm and distress it had caused me in regards to the failings, recognise that my endeavours in repeatedly contacting yourselves and waiting for phone calls to be returned also exasperated this element of failing, therefore, in light of the inaccurate data which led me to believe unauthorised recipient/s had the entirety of my data and the catastrophic repeated failing by NMC to put this right within a reasonable amount of time in an attempt to alleviate my concerns – and therefore provide compensatory payment for distress suffered during.

It is clear in this matter that the NMC has not exercised any form of due diligence.

Now, turning to an email sent to me by a Name Redacted, Data manager. I have copied this email below and have provided my comments in blue text. Again, this shows a lack of due diligence. The lack of due diligence is clearly shown in the actions and inactions of NMC surrounding concerns of data breach and unauthorised recipients, this is outlined above.

The lack of due diligence from your Data Requests Manager is shown by their admitting to I made a request in August 2020 for my data, that this had not been received by myself and if I have another SAR to consider then to provide details. This data manager has not shown any form of due diligence. They confirm that previously made a request in August 2020, they also confirm that I had not received the request. They negate my concerns and complaints in my attempts to repeatedly chase up this request despite constant reminders and have the audacity to tell me that I should provide details of the request if i should have another request to consider.
Ideally, your data manager should have actioned the SAR, afterall they admit that I made this request in August, they admit I had not received this request.

Due to the continued incompetence shown by this data manager, (incompetence in the fact that they told (Manager, Redacted) I had been sent the SAR in 2020, incompetence in not contacting me by phone despite numerous requests,  incompetence shown by stating they had received SAR request and then asking me to make the request again.  My comments to your colleagues email copied and pasted below are in blue text.

Dear Redacted

 

I was today contacted by Name Redacted, Contact Centre Manager, who advised that you had raised concerns about a data breach connected to a Subject Access Request which you submitted to the NMC. I was also copied into an email from our Legal Department in which you formally raised the same concerns.

It appears that the confusion here has stemmed from a complaint response which you received which advised that we had responded to a Subject Access Request from you on 12 September 2020. As you did not receive anything from us on 12 September 2020 this led you to believe that we must have sent our response to someone else. I can confirm that the date quoted in your complaint response was a typo, it should have read 12 September 2019. 

A typo as you say would tend to signify one error. Given the fact that your response listed to me four dates and each of these four dates were incorrect, it can hardly be considered to be a typo. This is incompetence and maladministration.

Please accept our apologies for this and the confusion this has caused you. I understand that when you spoke to Emma Bailey earlier today you advised that there was a response which you received in September 2019.

Incorrect. Redacted informed me that you had confirmed the data was sent to me in September 2020.  This is the result of your investigation after my repeated endeavours to try and get answers from yourselves in regards to missing data. The result of your investigation was clearly wrong. 

 

I hope the above allays your concerns that we may have sent your personal information to someone else, we did not respond to any Subject Access Requests from you in September 2020.

Neither did you respond to my requests in July 2020, nor August 2020, nor any other reminders I conveyed to yourselves via telephone messages in August 2020, nor September 2020 and October 2020 – despite constant reminders to yourselves.

I was told by Redacted that you would send me the SAR. You have failed to do so, all you have done is tell me NMC received my data request, have failed to provide me with said data request and then inform me that I should send information to yourselves if I have another SAR i wish you to consider. 

 

I further understand that you believe that there is an outstanding Subject Access Request with the NMC that has not been responded to. I have checked our records and can confirm that my team have not received any further Subject Access Requests from you since the request advised of above. I have noted that as part of the information collated during the investigation of your complaint our Quality Decision Making team advised that you did make a further request in August 2020 that was not forwarded to my team as you had advised them that you would be submitting another request therefore, there was no need to forward this to us. It is further advised that you later told the Quality Decision Making Team that you had decided to take us to County Court and would send an N1 County Court form to us. We have no record of receiving such a form.

I consider this response to be nothing other than lies. Clearly, and if you check your records, I have contacted the FOI phone number provided on a multitude of occasions in reference to my failed SAR. 

 

If you do have another Subject Access Request that you wish us to consider, please give me the details and I’ll ensure this is logged and processed.

Despite me stating it is my intention to issue an N1 claim form for you to provide me with SAR, despite my constant chasing this failed request up, despite you stating above that I made a request but it was not processed, you now ignore all of these things and ask me to provide details so it can be logged and processed.
Duuuuh !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Many thanks

The purpose of the SAR is to ascertain why it has taken NMC 2 years to inform me that the referral being processed was done at a cross purpose, ie, the wrong nurse investigated.
This is in despite of me chasing up the referral constantly and asking if evidence had been received. In addition to finding out why it has taken NMC 2 years to investigate the totally wrong thing, the purpose of SAR is so I can collate all the communications, plus your own internal notes / audits so I can add to my blog.

An example of my blog is here: http://www.maladministration.uk/nmc-complaint-dialogue-nmc-ignoring-issues/

As a courtesy to NMC staff I will be redacting any names. I am under no legal obligation to redact names, this is purely a courtesy.

Apologies for the lengthy reply to your email.  however this is to show that no due diligence has been shown by the NMC in regards to me stating that legal action would commence.
(See reply from your data manager as to lack of due diligence, in addition to other inactions)

To reiterate, I do intend to seek legal action in this instance in regards to a data breach. This data breach was inaccurate data which led me to believe another data breach had occurred in the disclosure of my data to unaythorised recipient/s.

If NMC is able to appease me before the time I sign and return the solicitors terms of business, then obviously no legal action will be taken.  I have not yet received this document from solicitors although am likely to receive tomorrow or in the next few days at the most.

If however NMC is unable to do this, then legal action will be initiated after I have received the solicitors terms of business through post, accepted signed and returned it.

Please let me know what the NMC intends to do in this instance, whether it wishes to provide compensation or alternatively is prepared for legal action to pursue for compensation in respect of the multitude of incompetences and courses of maladministration shown.

Kind regards

In regards to the legal action mentioned, this is now underway. 

Emails sent October 21st 2020

Hello,

I have earlier replied to your legal department stating that I would no longer be pursuing a legal claim for a data breach in respect of NMC disclosing my data to unauthorised recipients. Instead, it is my intention to now pursue a claim in respect of a data breach concerning inaccurate data which led me to believe that unauthorised recipient/s had my data, this and in addition to how the NMC conducted itself during the time I was frantically trying to get answers as to the unauthorised disclosure of data.
I also mentioned to your legal department that my solicitors are keen to take this case on under a no-win no-fee basis and that I would be accepting their terms of business and sending signed terms of business form to them. After I do this, then I am unable to stop any legal action unless I meet the costs of the solicitor myself.
I forgot to mention to the legal department my timeframe.  Whilst if I receive the solicitors terms of business today, then I will refrain from accepting it by signing and returning it to them for a period of 2 days.  This gives your legal department essentially at least 2 days to respond.  Please, inform your legal department of this.

Now turning to most recent complaint:

In addition to the recent complaints I made to yourselves last week in respect of firstly your response to me, then, after this further complaints highlighting further repeated occasions of the failing of NMC to provide me with a SAR in addition to speaking with a DPO.
Despite the previous complaint in relation to failed SAR plus speaking to DPO by way of them contacting me, despite complaining that managers had even intervened to ensure this would happen – i think a total of 3 times in relation to my data breach and a multitude of times in relation to failed SAR —- Despite all of this, I am still waiting for the SAR and a phone call from DPO.

After making the above as a complaint, a manager Name Redacted contacted me to assure me that I would receive a phone call from DPO in addition to my data request later that same day.  This was last week. I am still waiting for both.

Acutally, due to the continued incompetence shown, and the preposterous reply provided by your DPO, I am now not interested in a telephone call with them  as it is my firm belief that they have and are deliberately ignoring my concerns.

You can not refute my belief that DPO is ignoring my concerns since they have failed to return any phone call when I have been chasing up my data request over the last 2 months in addition to the fact that they sent me a letter stating that they recognise I made a data request in August 2020, they recognise that I have not received any request after August 2020, then have preposterous course of action to again ignore the data request by not supplying it to me, simply saying that I should get in contact if I want a data request.

So, summary of this comlaint – further failed SAR, further phone calls not returned despite managers interventions on several occasions.

Please note: Previously, I contacted NMC on a multitude of occasions in order to chase up ny SAR. Leaving messages on voicemail led to nothing, no phone call was returned. I then frantically last week attempted several times to speak with a DPO and was assured several times that a DPO would call me back.
I no longer wish to receive a phone call from DPO, the matter of data breach of disclosure of data to unauthorised persons is now rectified, albeit, legal action may very well stem from this under a data breach of inaccurate data that led me to suffer distress under a belief that my data was disclosed.
A phone call now from any DPO would be futile, I no longer wish to speak with them. However, they can of course and should do so – provide me with the SAR request in which they recognise i made in August this year, in which they recognise that has not been sent to me, in which they recognise that I am still awaiting this despite saying I would issue court proceedings to ensure it is forthcoming.

I am also making a request for removal of some of my data. This is in respect of my telephone number:  0#redacted’ – please remove this from any database you have. I do not now wish to receive any phone communication from yourselves.

Evidence of the NMC recognising that I made a SAR, that it has failed to provide me with said SAR, that it has not discharged its legal obligations to provide me with SAR despite being aware its failed, plus ignoring all of these things and saying if i have another SAR to consider please provide details – this continued maladministration and a clear lack of due diligence is provided as copy and paste email below, – my response is in blue text.

Given the fact that the purpose of SAR is for myself to see the maladministration and your course of actions during the last 2 years in which you have essentially been investigating the wrong nurse (and wasting my time for 2 years),  – your continued actions further compound this maladministration.

I also consider that the NMC in its course of actions are placing barriers in my way in order to pursue this complaint. Such barriers can be seen from 2017 and still exist to present date.  An example of these barriers and your preposterous response to complaints will be blogged about, I have made a start this week here: http://www.maladministration.uk 

It is my intention to blog about my experience, with annotations to complaint letters and place them on site. This is in an effort for the PSA and others to see that you are still unfit for purpose and still blatantly disregarding concerns from vulnerable people despite their endeavours.

2 years. Pathetic.   

Copy of preposterous failed GDPR SAR is below where you acknowledge it has not been received despite my request and fail to process it – this is in despite of Name Redacted saying i would be sent it.

 

I hope the above allays your concerns that we may have sent your personal information to someone else, we did not respond to any Subject Access Requests from you in September 2020.

Neither did you respond to my requests in July 2020, nor August 2020, nor any other reminders I conveyed to yourselves via telephone messages in August 2020, nor September 2020 and October 2020 – despite constant reminders to yourselves.

I was told by Emma that you would send me the SAR. You have failed to do so, all you have done is tell me NMC received my data request, have failed to provide me with said data request and then inform me that I should send information to yourselves if I have another SAR i wish you to consider. 

 

Email received October 16th, 2020

I was today contacted by Emma Bailey, Contact Centre Manager, who advised that you had raised concerns about a data breach connected to a Subject Access Request which you submitted to the NMC. I was also copied into an email from our Legal Department in which you formally raised the same concerns.

It appears that the confusion here has stemmed from a complaint response which you received which advised that we had responded to a Subject Access Request from you on 12 September 2020. As you did not receive anything from us on 12 September 2020 this led you to believe that we must have sent our response to someone else. I can confirm that the date quoted in your complaint response was a typo, it should have read 12 September 2019. Please accept our apologies for this and the confusion this has caused you. I understand that when you spoke to Emma Bailey earlier today you advised that there was a response which you received in September 2019.

I hope the above allays your concerns that we may have sent your personal information to someone else, we did not respond to any Subject Access Requests from you in September 2020.

I further understand that you believe that there is an outstanding Subject Access Request with the NMC that has not been responded to. I have checked our records and can confirm that my team have not received any further Subject Access Requests from you since the request advised of above. I have noted that as part of the information collated during the investigation of your complaint our Quality Decision Making team advised that you did make a further request in August 2020 that was not forwarded to my team as you had advised them that you would be submitting another request therefore, there was no need to forward this to us. It is further advised that you later told the Quality Decision Making Team that you had decided to take us to County Court and would send an N1 County Court form to us. We have no record of receiving such a form.

If you do have another Subject Access Request that you wish us to consider, please give me the details and I’ll ensure this is logged and processed.

Many thanks

Redacted
Information & Data Requests Manager
People and Organisational Effectiveness
Nursing and Midwifery Council

The above email is in relation to my data breach concern as well as my data request which I had been chasing up on a multitude of occasions. NMC in their reply acknowledge the error they caused by falsely claiming the data request was sent to me when it was not whilst still not providing me with the data request. They then say there are no outstanding requests!
In response to the above:
Email sent October 22nd 2020

Are you going g to provide me with my data request or do round to ignore the request?

Your last reply to me literally saying you’re aware of the request, that it had not been processed and to contact you if I have another request is abysmal. Clearly you have ignored my request and are continuing to ignore.
Nmc may not wish me to blog at www.maladministration.UK however, Nmc were informed of my intention to blog in 2017.
After enduring 3 years of systemic maladministration I have started to blog this week.
I am not legally obliged to redact personal information from blog such as your colleagues names, however out of courtesy all names have so far and will continue to be redacted.
This is out of courtesy for yourself and colleagues.
I would appreciate the same courtesy afforded to myself and that is for access to all of my data and to stop ignoring requests.
Nmc lawyer has wrote to me today requesting I do not start legal action but to wait for conclusion of complaint and investigation into your recent failings of data breach. This however does not preclude me from proceeding with action to request a judge make an order that you discharge your legal obligations in respect of my multitude of requests for sar (in other words, for you to do your job)
You had one thing to do, provide sar, you failed and instead provided me a nonsensical response. At least your response is consistent with other Nmc responses, ie, nonsensical.
I am still waiting for my car to ascertain what Nmc has been doing for last 3 years, why it had wasted 2 years pursuing wrong investigation despite my chasing up. Also to ascertain the preposterous excuses provided such as no credible evidence despite the fact credible evidence exists from gov dept as medical professionals.
Please, provide sar. You have a legal obligation to do so. It is clear so far that you have failed and are still ignoring request.
Apologies if this email appears rude by me saying for you to do your job, it is as it is, as it’s clear from your last response you are blatantly and deliberately ignoring my request.
Regards
Email above may sound rude, however, in my defence I was in communication with the person who could have and should have immediately informed me of my data breach concerns instead of leaving me suffer with added stress and anxiety for that week period of when I was led to believe that my data was lost or in the hands of unauthorised people. 
Below email requests I send in consent, despite it being provided earlier.
October 29th, 2020

Dear Mr Redacted

Thank you for your call earlier today.

I have spoken to our screening colleagues and they have said that if you could complete the attached form electronically, by typing your name and entering the date on the form, and then email this back to me we can treat this as an electronic signature. We will then be able to send the case to screening for further enquiries and a fresh decision.

Please let me know if you have any questions about this. I will be available by phone until 5pm this evening.

Yours sincerely

Redacted

Decision Review Support Manager

Professional Regulation

020 7681 5278

Nursing and Midwifery Council

Previous communication above shows the NMC have failed to provide reasonable adjustment requests, failed to respond to the complaint surrounding this. Also shows their failing to provide any information during the time they led me to believe a data breach had occurred – this is in despite of my request for another reasonable adjustment for information ASAP based upon my stress and anxiety knowing my data was essentially lost and in the hands of unauthorised people.

Further communication will be blooged here in the future. This is email correspondence from 2020 to present date.  This wlll show that the NMC have failed to

  1. Provide me with an outcome to extra information I sent in regards to a referral. NMC have been reminded that I had been chasing up an outcome in relation to the extra evidenced information I sent to them after their decision to not proceed with the referral. NMC state they have considered this information yet have failed to provide any outcome.
  2. Provide me with a data request under UK GDPR legislation. This is for information that I have been chasing up on a multitude of occasions for several months, in relation to 1 above. Despite this and indeed despite a request being made for this data on 11th March 2022, the reply did not include this data.  NMC have failed yet another data request, despite making the request in the same email thread copied with PSA.

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