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Open letter to Government Legal Department

From 2015 onwards, DWP has contacted me by phone on numerous occasions despite my multiple requests that they refrain from doing so.

From 2015 till 2017:

  1. I previously quoted the Data Protection Act to try and get phone calls to stop. DWP said they would remove my phone number and stop phone calls, yet the phone calls continued.
  2. I then quoted the Data Protection Act in conjunction with the Equality Act whilst offering DWP a supporting letter from my GP citing supporting reasons in respect of my mental health as to why phone calls should stop. DWP responded that they did not need the letter from my GP and stated phone calls would stop, however the phone calls continued.
  3. I then proceeded to request DWP stop contacting me by phone and relied on the Data Protection Act, Equality Act and Protection from Harassment Act.  DWP said they would stop phone calls, however the phone calls continued.

Despite quoting the 3 legislations above in addition to offering a letter from my GP, DWP continued to phone me. In particular, one phone call made on 3rd October 2017 was a data breach as private information was divulged to my father (despite him answering all the security questions wrong)

Phone calls have continued from 2015 up until August 2023 being the last time DWP called me (so far), both phone calls made within a week and both phone calls were made in order to discuss my complaint about not wanting phone calls.

In light of the above, I decided to start a court claim against DWP.  Clearly, DWP have been disregarding my requests, discriminating against my mental health and repeatedly failing to adhere to Data Protection Act (previously) then GDPR, Equality Act and Protection From Harassment Act.

Despte my offering of a letter from my GP in support of my request to not have phone calls, DWP and Government Legal Department attempted to claim that my legal action was “de minimis”, or, in other words my legal action in respect of the phone call was trivial.

I consider the claim by DWP and Government Legal Department that my claim was trivial to be discrimination. Had my claim been trivial, I would not have had a supporting letter from my GP.  Whilst I can appreciate that a random unsolicitied telemarketing call could be considered to be trivial, the fact that both DWP and Government Legal Department consider their repeated non adherence to legislation is trivial shows that they have both disregarded my mental health and the previous supporting letter from my GP.

DWP and Goverment Legal Department then successfully struck out my claim under the Equality Act and Protection from Harassment Act.
I managed to argue their striking out of my claim on the basis that it was trivial.

Essentially, both DWP and Government Legal Department seem to be quite happy in allowing a vulnerable person to endure several years of discrimination and harassment, and when the vulnerable person decides to take court action, the Government Legal Department (in my opinion) made false submissions to the court.  The false submissions were –  Equality Act and Protection From Harassment Act – statute of limitations.

 

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

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 informationand 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-today functions

The assessment recording was listened to by the CHDA medical advisor. CHDA provided us with a copy of the medical advisors 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 thisIf 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.

Discrimination & Dishonesty

0

In relation to the referral I made to the NMC along with irrefutable evidence that the nurse had wrote inaccurate data, the response from NMC is that the nurse is not dishonest.

I fail to see how various inaccuracies are not considered by the NMC to be dishonest.
Not only various inaccuracies, but the entirety of the report was inaccurate.  I fail to see why the NMC considers this to not be dishonest.
In addition to the entirety of the report being inaccurate, there are also blatant lies, for example I stated what medication I was taking and the nurse reported I was not taking any medication.  I fail to see why the NMC considers this to not be dishonest.
Furthermore, the entirety of the report attempted to paint a different opposite picture to that of the facts.  Again, I fail to see why the NMC considers this to not be dishonest.

Incidentally, within the “investigation”, the NMC in its table of findings were dishonest themselves in their attempt to water-down my complaint.  The NMC did this by stating that the nurse recorded what medication I was taking.  The fact is that the nurse did not do this, NMC have in my opinion lied in an attempt to mitigate my complaint.

Medical professionals have seen the response from NMC and all have agreed it is unfit for purpose.

So the NMC state that a nurse is not dishonest despite the NMC seeing clear irrefutable evidence that the nurse made inaccurate data as well as blatant lies. 

If you contrast my referral with other comparable referrals, it can be seen that other nurses have either been struck off or restrictions placed on their work.  There are a number of referrals that show this.  It is therefore my opinion that the NMC have discriminated against me.

It seems that the NMC have not adhered to their mantra of “lessons learned” as they are still carrying on in their discriminatory derisory approach with referrals if the referral is linked to DWP.. Previously, the Professional Standards Authority intervened in relation to DWP referrals, however, NMC are still carrying on discriminating against any DWP referrals.

 

NMC referral response (draft)

0

The Referral – NMC response with my annotations in blue

1. Mr. X first contacted the NMC to make a referral about registered nurse Bethan Parry’s fitness to practise in 2018. Nurse Parry works for the Centre for Health and Disability Assessments (CHDA) and carries out assessments on behalf of the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP). Mr. X’s referral concerned a report Nurse Parry produced for a work capability assessment. Mr. X alleged that Nurse Parry lied in her report. He said the report didn’t accurately record several important key elements in relation to his condition and ignored others. Mr. X raised his concerns with the DWP. The DWP wrote to Mr X on 8 November 2018 and revised the decision about his entitlement to employment support allowance.

The decision was revised based upon facts, the oral recording of the report and not based on the original fictitious lying report made by the nurse. The fact that the nurse made a multitude of errors in the form of inaccurate data clearly shows the nurse to be dishonest and incompetent in recording data. 
2. Our Screening team considered the referral at that time. On 11 January 2019,
they wrote to Mr. X to say they’d decided not to investigate further. That
decision explained that, despite a number of attempts to contact Mr. X they’d been unable to obtain further information from him and didn’t have his agreement to share the information he’d provided.
This is incorrect. I had for a period of time made numerous phone calls to chase up this referral.  Despite me mentioning the nurses name during said phone calls, NMC essentially wasted around 2 years of time as they were investigating the wrong nurse.
Furthermore, this is incorrect as I did provide consent.  I provided consent several times. It can not be refuted by NMC that I provided consent because NMC replied to one of my consent emails.  However, NMC states I did not provide consent.
Incidentally, NMC have failed to answer my complaints surrounding the above. 

3. On 30 October 2020, Mr. X provided agreement to share his information.
This negates the fact that I had provided agreement several times prior to this, each time chasing it up, each time was ignored. It can not be denied that NMC did not receive agreement as it had replied to one of my emails, yet, it persists in its stance that I did not provide consent / agreement.
Raising a complaint in regards to this was not answered despite multiple requests for clarification as to why I was ignored. 
The Screening Team’s Decision
4. Having received Mr. X’s agreement to share as well as further information from him, the Screening team considered the concerns again.
Having received a multitude of complaints concerning why you had not given any regards to my agreement to share which I made previously, all these were ignored. 
5. Before making a decision, the Screening team contacted CHDA. They provided a response on 3 December 2020 that included information about Nurse Parry’s employment history and their response to Mr. X’s concerns. On 8 February 2021, CHDA provided the Screening team with a copy of Nurse Parry’s report along with a transcript of the assessment.
6. On 25 February 2021, Nurse Parry provided the Screening team with a response, a reflection and a clinical reference.
7. On 21 May 2021, the Screening team wrote to Mr X to say they’d decided not to investigate further at that time. The decision said:
‘As the concerns raised by Mr X don’t engage any of our three categories of seriousness they don’t pass this stage of our screening process. We understand and acknowledge Mr X’s concerns and the impact that they’ve had on him.
We would also like to make it clear to Mr X that our decision does not mean that this matter itself is not serious, however Mrs Parry’s actions in isolation, which appears to have been errors, don’t suggest that they’re serious enough to require our involvement as a regulator.
NMC claims my referral and evidence existing of a nurse lying on a multitude of occasions does not pass their three categories of seriousness. Therefore, a nurse who deliberately and blatantly lies in a report is not considered to be serious by the NMC. 

Based on the information we’ve received we don’t consider that this matter
suggests that Mrs Parry is a danger to those in her care, or that her practise
should be restricted in some way in order to maintain confidence in the
professions. We therefore won’t be investigating any further at this time.’

Having told Bethan Parry about my previous assessment and its inaccuracies which caused my claim to end and resulted in me having to go to job centre in order to claim Job seekers allowance – and whilst at the job centre having a mental breakdown, panic, stress, depression and crying at the advisors desk.
Despite the seriousness of the above and the fact it was explained to nurse Bethan Parry who decided to not give it any regard, it is obvious to any reasonable person that:  Someone suffering with mental health problems who clearly has evidence to this effect is all disregarded by the nurse who did not record this information. Furthermore, other pertinent information was not provided in the report.
The report contained several inaccuracies – or lies.  This clearly shows that nurse Bethan Parry was dishonest in her actions. 
Concerns raised about the decision not to take any further action at this time
8. On receiving the decision, Mr X contacted the NMC. He said he didn’t agree with the statement that the concern was an isolated incident. He said Nurse Parry made several mistakes within the report and the decision referred to a prior complaint.
I fail to see how several inaccuracies in the medical report provided by the nurse is an isolated incident.  Not only are there several inaccuracies, there is also evidence that the nurse purposefully and deliberately chose to be dishonest by making an inaccurate report.
The evidence existing to show the nurse was dishonest is outlined above, whereby I explained to Bethan Parry the circumstances surrounding my previous assessment and it causing me to have a mental breakdown in job centre.
9. A decision at the Screening stage that a case doesn’t need to be referred to the case examiners means we’ve decided not to take further action at that time. If there’s new information or concerns about our decision not to refer, we can carry out a review.
Providing you evidence of a nurses deliberate lies should have been sufficient for you to investigate.  In choosing not to do so, you are placing the nursing profession into disrepute, undermining public confidence and ultimately treating vulnerable people with contempt.
10.This review is carried out by an Assistant Registrar in the Quality of Decision Making team. As an Assistant Registrar, my role is to review the decision made by the Screening team to check whether there were any problems with how the decision was made and to consider whether a different decision should be made.
11.I can decide that:
• no further action is needed at this time
• the case should be sent to the Screening team for further enquiries and a fresh decision to be made based on all of the information, including any new information obtained.
• a case where the concern is about someone’s fitness to practise should be referred to the Case Examiners

Guidance we followed when reviewing this case
12.I’ve applied the guidance in our Fitness to Practise library when carrying out this review. Our guidance is available on our website at www.nmc.org.uk/ftp-library
13.In particular, I’ve taken account of:

• Aims and principles for fitness to practise (www.nmc.org.uk/ftp-
library/understanding-fitness-to-practise/using-fitness-to-practise)

• How we determine seriousness (www.nmc.org.uk/ftp-library/understanding-fitness-to-practise/how-we-determine-seriousness)

• Screening – Our overall approach (www.nmc.org.uk/ftp-library/screening/our-
overall-approach)

• The Three stages of a Screening decision (www.nmc.org.uk/ftp-
library/screening/our-overall-approach/the-three-stages-of-our-screening-
decision)

Do you really rely on your audacity to imply that my concern of a nurse deliberately lying is not serious?  My opinion is that the NMC essentially has BLOOD ON ITS HANDS in relation to discriminating against vulnerable people.
May I remind you about the “DWP Death Figures”,  whereby people have actually killed themselves because your nursing colleagues have again lied in their report.
The actions of these nurses and the assessment is widely reported via some media outlets. In addition to the number of people who have either died as a result of the nurses actions, or have committed suicide because of the nurses actions.
https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/dwp-figures-reveal-sharp-rise-in-secret-benefit-death-reviews/  Is an excellent article concerning the deaths / suicides of people who have suffered at the hands of the nurses who lie.

• If we don’t refer as case (www.nmc.org.uk/ftp-library/screening/our-overall-
approach/if-we-dont-refer-a-case)

• Explaining how and why a nurse or midwife presents a regulatory concern

(www.nmc.org.uk/ftp-library/screening/regulatory-concerns/identifying-and-
explaining-regulatory-concerns)

• Misconduct (www.nmc.org.uk/ftp-library/understanding-fitness-to-
practise/fitness-to-practise-allegations/misconduct)

• Lack of competence (www.nmc.org.uk/ftp-library/understanding-fitness-to-
practise/fitness-to-practise-allegations/lack-of-competence)

• Insight and strengthened practice (www.nmc.org.uk/ftp-library/understanding-
fitness-to-practise/insight-and-strengthened-practice)

Our Decision
14.I’ve considered whether something went wrong with how the Screening team
made their decision. I’ve also considered whether there’s any new information
that could change the decision.

15.On 10 May 2021, our screening guidance was updated to a three-stage process.
The letter sent to Mr X on 21 May 2021 with the reasons for the original decision attached, referred to the previous four-stage process. This had the potential to cause confusion, but I don’t consider it means something went wrong with the decision itself, which referred to the correct process.
16.Mr X’s concern about Nurse Parry’s fitness to practise originally arose because he identified a number of inaccuracies between what he said during the assessment with Nurse Parry on 8 February 2018 and what Nurse Parry wrote in her report. The assessment was recorded and a transcript produced, a copy of which was obtained and considered by the Screening team.
17.Before making the decision, the Screening team contacted Mr X to ensure they’d identified and understood the full scope of the concern. They produced a table of concerns that they shared with Mr X. In emails dated 22 and 23 April 2019, Mr X expressed concerns about what the Screening team had written in relation to a concern about medication. He reiterated his concern is that Nurse Parry lied by documenting that he wasn’t taking any medication whatsoever. He confirmed the rest of the table was accurate.
NMC table of findings contained some, but not all of the inaccurate data.
Within the table of findings, NMC attempted to again provide fiction over fact by stating that the nurse recorded my medication. The fact is that the nurse did not state this, she stated I do not take any medication whatsoever. 
18.The information available to the Screening team raised a concern about two
different, albeit linked areas of practice:
• clear and accurate record keeping,
• honesty and integrity.
The nurse had one job to do, that was to complete a medical record based around my assessment.
Clearly, the medical record was not accurate. There exists a number of inaccuracies.
Clearly, the nurse was not honest in her approach – not only due to the number of inaccuracies, but also failed entirely to give any regard to my condition (as explained above)
19.The original decision identified differences between the transcript of the
assessment and Nurse Parry’s report. However, it said ‘it appears that this matter is an instance of poor record keeping rather a deliberate intention to mislead.’
Poor record keeping would suggest a few mistakes.
In this instance, the entirety of the report contained inaccuracies, the nurse cherry picked information and twisted information in her report in addition to ignoring any pertinent elements.
It is for this reason that DWP overturned the decision after they gave regard to what I had said rather than what the nurse said.

In light of the above, the fact that the whole report was inaccurate,  cherry picked information,  twisting of facts and downright lies showed a clear intention to mislead.

For the NMC to be aware of the above and claim that the nurse did not have any intention to mislead and was not dishonest is at best a pathetic response. 

The decision went on to say ‘there’s no indication that what (sic) Mrs Parry was
dishonest or that the report was written with the intention to mislead. The
information that we’ve received does not suggest a serious underlying issue with Mrs Parry’s professionalism or attitude towards patient safety which could be more difficult to put right.’
Blatantly lying, disregarding key pertinent information and twisting facts to any reasonable person is dishonesty and done with an intention to mislead.
The lies stated by the nurse is a concern for patient safety.  Outlined above are DWP death figures,  or you may search “Daniel Blake”
20.In other words, the original decision concluded that the difference between the transcript and Nurse Parry’s report was a clinical issue in a discrete area of practice.
21.When we look at concerns about clinical issues, a pattern of incidents is more likely to show there’s a risk. We recognise people can make mistakes and for that reason, a clinical error that’s not part of a pattern of errors is unlikely to show there’s a risk of harm to people in the future. It’s also easier to put clinical concerns right through things like training, supervision and evidence of continued safe practice.
A pattern of incidents surrounding nurse Bethan Parry is shown within my referral. The pattern of incidence are the multitude of lies, of omitting information and skewing information in an effort to end my ESA claim.

Clearly, the pattern of these lies, or, inaccurate record keeping exists in my assessment.  Furthermore, a similar complaint was raised against the same nurse by an entirely different person.  Again, this shows a pattern.

 
22.Our guidance doesn’t define how many incidents amounts to a pattern. This will usually depend on the setting or context in which the nurse, midwife or nursing associate was working at the time, how they responded, the risk of harm in what happened on each occasion and what the evidence says about why it happened.
Our context commitments say building up an accurate picture of someone’s practising history can help with this. For example, it can be useful to know whether the nurse, midwife or nursing associate had encountered a similar
situation or carried out a similar task before, knew what to do and would usually do it safely and effectively.
23.Sometimes a single incident can involve multiple errors, but that doesn’t automatically mean it’s part of a pattern. For example, if a nurse becomes distracted and forgets to administer medication to a single patient, we wouldn’t describe this as a pattern solely on the basis that it involved a number of different types of medication.
Clearly the pattern can be seen within my assessment.  None of the nurses report had any accuracy.  The nurses report followed a pattern of deceit and dishonesty. The entirety of the nurses report followed a pattern of either omitting key relevant information,  or skewing the facts to make it seem I am fit and healthy,  or downright lies. THIS IS A PATTERN.
Incidentally, the pattern can not only be seen from my own assessment, but can also be seen from someone else who complained about the same nurse in respect of how she made an inaccurate report.

2 people complaining about the same nurse,  each person having a multiple of evidence / complaints,  yet, NMC decides it is not a pattern and is quite happy for this derisory nurse to remain in her role of assessing vulnerable people. 

24.Patterns can be less relevant for other types of concern, such as those about
someone’s honesty and integrity. The reason for this is that these types of
concerns could show there’s a problem with the nurse, midwife or nursing
associate’s attitude. Attitudinal concerns are more difficult to put right and are
capable of affecting the public’s trust in all nurses, midwives and nursing
associates. In these kinds of cases, it may not be possible for the nurse, midwife
or nursing associate to address the concern and may mean we need to take
restrictive regulatory action.
I have in my opinion above proved that a pattern clearly exists. However, I now turn to your assertion that patterns can be less relevant if in relation to the nurses honesty and integrity.
Details as to why the nurse was not honest and not showing integrity can be seen from my fitness to practise referral alone. Clearly, the nuses actions in this element of a multitude of inaccurate data,  skewing facts,  cherry picking information and failing to record other pertinent elements shows it is far from an isolated incident,  it shows it is a pattern,  ultimately it shows that the nurse acted dishonestly and with no integrity.

25.For this reason, an allegation about deliberately recording inaccurate information is a very serious one. Mr X is firm in his view that the differences between the transcript and the report means Nurse Parry lied. However, our guidance says we’ll always make an objective assessment of the evidence, rather than rely on an individual’s interpretation.
This is not an individuals interpretation.
This is also the interpretation of the DWP.
This is also the interpretation of my own medical health team.
This is also the interpretation provided by my solicitors who are taking action against CHDA and the solicitors medical panel.
26.We need a clear foundation before we accuse a nurse, midwife or nursing
associate of being dishonest. On its own, I don’t consider the differences
between the transcript and Nurse Parry’s report justifies accusing Nurse Parry of such a serious allegation. Having carried out a review, I’ve not identified any
other evidence or sources of evidence that could support a concern about Nurse
Parry’s honesty and integrity.
Deliberately lying, deliberately omitting key pertinent elements, deliberately skewing information and cherry picking information in order to disallow my claim, – in addition to deliberately ignoring the struggles i reported with evidence –  and the NMC claims this does not mean the nurse is not dishonest not acting with integrity.

27.In his correspondence, Mr X has referred to reports from whistle-blowers saying that CHDA staff are pressured to lie, alter or fabricate reports. However, I’ve not identified any evidence or any sources of evidence that could show Nurse Parry was under pressure to do this or had any other reason to lie in the report she produced. Therefore, the original decision was right to view the concern as one about a discrete area of clinical practice. This means it was relevant to take account of whether there’s evidence of a pattern of similar concerns. In the context of Nurse Parry’s role, this would mean whether there’s
evidence that Nurse Parry hadn’t made accurate records on other occasions and that any inaccuracies were significant enough to mean there’s a risk of harm.

28.It was also relevant to take account of:
• Nurse Parry’s response to the concern,
• the action CHDA had taken as Nurse Parry’s employer,
• the evidence of Nurse Parry’s practising history,
29.The information available to the Screening team doesn’t indicate a pattern of
similar concerns. Even though Mr X raised multiple issues, they all relate to a single report. CHDA provided information about another complaint in 2018, but there’s no record of any similar complaints since. Nurse Parry continues to work in the same role, provided a reflection and a positive clinical reference from her line manager. The clinical reference refers to weekly quality assurance of Nurse
Parry’s work, comments positively on her professionalism and ability to learn from feedback.
None of the report was accurate. All of the report was inaccurate, this to any reasonable person would suggest a pattern. A pattern of a multitude of errors albeit within one assessment.
In regards to the nurses ability to learn from feedback, clearly this is not the case as no lessons have been learnt as the same nurse has received two complaints of similar nature.

30.The evidence available doesn’t show Nurse Parry’s practice presents a risk to patients or members of the public in the future.

So telling lies and recording inaccurate data does not present a risk to patients or members of the public?
The evidence exists to show the nurse lied on a multitude of occasions.  Not only this, but the nurse ignored a risk to myself. I clearly explained to the nurse my problems of prior assessment, I explained I had mental breakdown in job centre and could  not claim any form of help via benefits.
The nurse chose not to record this information, she was aware that her actions of lying would invariably put me in the same position previously which I had informed her about.
This is a clear risk to the public as she totally disregarded my evidence in this instance. 
As a concern about clinical practice that’s capable of being addressed, it doesn’t require us to take action solely to maintain public confidence or uphold standards. Therefore, it was right for the original decision to decide not to investigate further at that time.
I fail to see how a nurses deliberate lies on a multitude of occasions in addition to the nurse cherry picking information, skewing information, fabricating information and ignoring key evidence as to my mental health struggles is capable of being addressed.  This to any reasonable average person would dictate that the nurse lacks both honesty and integrity and is therefore by extension a risk to the public. 
31.In an email dated 21 May 2021, Mr X said the original decision, and specifically the reference to an isolated incident, goes against the Equality Act.
He also said the NMC treats concerns from vulnerable people differently, ignoring those involving the DWP. When we develop our guidance and policies and when we make decisions we do so in accordance with equality law and we are required to consider how our decisions, guidance and policies might affect people with protected characteristics. I’ve considered Mr X’s comments but
have concluded that the decision applied our guidance correctly.
Hopefully the PSA will intervene in your derisory unfit for purpose approaches again when in relation to referrals linked with DWP.  Afterall, NMC is already guilty of this discrimination earlier which caused PSA intervention.

32.In his communication, both before and after the original decision was made, Mr X raised a specific issue about Nurse Parry’s record of the medication he was taking and how the NMC have dealt with this. I’ve reviewed Mr X’s emails, including those dated 11 February 2021, 22 April 2021 and 8 October 2021 that touch on this issue. I’ve also reviewed the transcript of the assessment and the ESA85 medical report form.
33.These documents show that Mr X told Nurse Parry he wasn’t taking any medication (other than sleeping tablets) at the time of the assessment. However, he did say that he was due to start taking new medication. Nurse Parry recorded this on page 3 of the report. However, this information wasn’t included in the assessment summary on page 18 and Mr X said it didn’t form part of the DWP’s decision-making process.
Page 3 of the report is not seen by DWP for their decision making. The only report seen by DWP is the medical report.  Whilst you note that the nurse recorded I take medication on her own notes, for the medical report to state that I am not taking any medication whatsoever is just another piece of evidence showing that the nurse was totally dishonest and lacking integrity. 
34.Mr X believes the original screening decision attempted to ‘water down’ or ‘negate’ this area of his complaint because it referred to what Nurse Parry wrote on page 3 of the report. While Mr Xis entitled to his view, I don’t consider this means something went wrong with the original decision. We’re not in receipt of evidence to show that, having recorded it earlier in the report, Nurse Parry was also required to include information about medication Mr X was due to start
in the assessment summary section. Even if there was, this doesn’t indicate the
screening team failed to consider the full seriousness of the concern. As a
concern about clinical practice and in the absence of a pattern of similar
concerns, there’s no evidence of a serious concern that could require us to take
regulatory action to protect the public.
What a lovely way of attempting to negate my concern by claiming you do not see evidence that the nurse was required to record this in my medical report.  The nurse is required to write pertinent key elements of the claimants condition in order for DWP to decide benefit entitlement.
NMC claim there is no evidence to show that the nurse should have wrote about my medication, however, evidence is not needed in this regard.  The fact is, the nurse deliberately lied in regards to my medication. This, along with her other lies shows her lack of honesty and integrity. 
Conclusion
35.For the reasons above, I don’t consider anything went wrong with how the original decision was made. I’ve not identified any new information that could change the decision.
Nurse records inaccurate information on a multitude of occasions (NMC picks up on some but not all)
Nurse ignores key elements of my condition and does not report
All of the inaccurate data, the lies, omitting information, skewing information was all done in an effort to disallow my ESA claim. The actions of the nurse show that she is both dishonest and lacks integrity.  Pretty much the same actions shown by NMC, lack of honesty and integrity. 
 
Given the fact that the PSA had to intervene with NMC previously, I would have thought NMC would adopt its “lessons learned” mantry and acted accordingly and actually investigated the nurses without resorting to more preposterous excuses as it will not investigate.
 
As for NMC claiming that the nurse is not dishonest and has integrity, then all I can suggest for NMC is to see a definition of these words at dictionary.com

Orwell would be proud of your doublespeak 🙂

NMC feedback – Taking account of context

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The NMC write:

When people raise concerns about a nurse, midwife or nursing associate’s fitness to practise, it’s our responsibility to act in the way that best protects people from coming to harm in the future.

We don’t seek to blame individuals or the system they work in. But where there’s evidence of a serious concern about a nurse, midwife or nursing associate’s fitness to practise, we need to take action to protect the public. This decision will always involve trying to understand the particular circumstances they were working in at the time. We’ll also need to think about if we need to take any other steps to reduce the risk of something happening again, such as sharing information with other agencies.

We want to be systematic, methodical and consistent in our approach to taking account of context. When we look at concerns that have arisen in somebody’s practice we need to ask:

  • Is there evidence of a serious concern that requires us to take regulatory action to protect the public?
  • If so, why did this happen and do we think it could happen again?
  • If so, what action do we need to take to protect the public?

The above is taken from the NMC website here: Taking account of context – The Nursing and Midwifery Council (nmc.org.uk)

My response is as follows and in red text:

Is there evidence of a serious concern that requires us to take regulatory action to protect the public?
I had previously sent you evidence of a serious concern, that a registered nurse had deliberately lied between when completing a medical assessment. Your response to me is that I should contact the nurses employer, I refuted your response. Your other response to me was that no credible evidence exists, I refuted this by stating that there is clear credible evidence and this evidence was used to overturn decisions which were made from the nurses lies or inaccurate reporting.  The NMC failed to investigate this fitness to practise and failed to answer my concerns and complaints surrounding this.
In 2020 / 2021, I attempted to make / chase up another fitness to practise referral, again this fitness to practise referral has clear evidence of another nurses lies and inaccurate reporting. This is clear cut evidence which can not be refuted. The NMC failed to process this referral as the NMC claimed it had not received my consent for them to investigate.  I pointed out that I had already provided consent. After chasing this up, I provided consent yet again – this time the NMC replied to my email of consent so they could not possibly refute it had not been received. However, despite chasing the referral again, NMC again claimed that consent had not been received. 

If so, why did this happen and do we think it could happen again?
I feel that this happens because the nurses involved have knowledge that their regulatory body (NMC) will take no action in respect of their inaccurate reporting and/or lies.  It has been noted that the NMC regulatory body the Professional Standards Authority has previously intervened in regards to these cases. However, despite this previous intervention, from my own experience after said intervention the NMC are still placing barriers in front of vulnerable people in an effort to dissuade them from making fitness to practise referrals as well as in an effort to dissuade them from making complaints. Given the fact that complaints and concerns I have made repeatedly have not been answered, I see no other form of conclusion.

If so, what action do we need to take to protect the public?
Govern yourselves accordingly inline with your safeguarding policy at least. Do not attempt to ignore complaints and concerns made to you (this has been done to me repeatedly previously and again lately in 2020 and 2021). In the event that you do not ignore complaints and concerns and you reply to them, then address the complaints and concerns rather than making a reply that does not address said complaints and concerns.
You should ideally protect the public – especially vulnerable members of the public who try to process a fitness to practise referral to yourselves by not ignoring their referral, not ignoring the consent they provide for you to investigate (twice despite chasing up).  You should not ignore complaints from the public about the NMC by failing to answer or even reply to the complaints. In the event you do reply to the complaints then you should not reply with a generic response that doesn’t answer the crux of the concerns and complaints. Even when you have failed to answer complaints and I have taken the time to list these in bullet point form in an effort for you to not ignore them, you still reply by not addressing them.

I hope that you will find the above input useful, I guess it will be the NMC usual mantra of “lessons learned” 

 

 

Open Letter to Andrea Sutcliffe, Chief Executive of NMC

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Dear Andrea Sutcliffe,

I am writing to you so that you are aware of my experiences of the Nursing & Midwifery Council in the way it carries our fitness to practise referrals as well as dealing with concerns and complaints. I have not had a reply to my email sent to CEO in NMC, so therefore am now formulating this open letter as of 22nd March 2021.  This is draft copy, it will be edited soon.

My first fitness to practise referral to the NMC resulted in different excuses being provided as to why it could not investigate. An example of these excuses is that it would be better for the nurses employer to investigate – I refuted this excuse by stating the nurses employer is reported in the media for its lies. Another example of an excuse to not investigate was that there was no credible evidence that existed – I refuted this excuse by stating that credible evidence indeed does exist in addition to the fact that my own medical health team has seen this evidence and said the nurse is unfit for purpose in her role. However refuting your excuse led you to take zero action.
It must be noted that in relation to these elements, I raised a complaint to which as yet remains unanswered. Your complaints department are consistent in not answering concerns and complaints.

I then made another fitness to practise referral to yourselves and chased this up on a multitude of occasions during the last two years and indeed to present date. Earlier, I was told that no consent had been received from myself in order for you to pursue the referral.
I stated many times that consent had been given and offered to send in again. Indeed, in August 2020 I sent consent again via email, the NMC actually replied to this email, however afterwards it was said that consent had not been received. Do you see a recurring theme here? Consent provided to NMC for them to investigate, yet NMC ignores said consent to investigate.
It must be noted that in relation to the elements of NMC receiving consent and replying to the email which provided consent for NMC to state months afterwards it had not received consent has been raised as a complaint on a multitude of occasions, however it remains unanswered. Again, your complaints department are consistent in not answering concerns and complaints.

After chasing up a fitness to practise referral for approximately 2 years, despite me mentioning the nurses name upon chasing this up the conclusion provided by NMC was that it had been investigating at cross purposes and was in the process of investigating my first referral and not the referral I had been chasing up.
In relation to this mix up, I raised the point that NMC should have checked to see if the nurse they were investigating was actually still registered with the NMC. I could have told you myself that the nurse quit her reqistration a year or so before your conclusion.
It must be noted that in relation to my complaint of NMC essentially wasting approximately two years in investigating the wrong nurse has been raised as a complaint on a multitude of occasions, however it remains unanswered. Again, your complaints department are consistent in not answering concerns and complaints.

In light of the fact that NMC had essentially wasted approximately two years investigating the wrong nurse, I made a Subject Access Request / SAR for all data. This is so I could try and ascertain how this error arose. Despite making the SAR on numerous occasions I was ignored.  Despite complaining that I had not received the SAR to your complaints department, again, I was ignored. Your complaints department then claimed I had received the SAR and provided me with a date that I had received it.  Infact, your complaints department in one of their responses provided me with four different dates, each of these dates were completely wrong.
I then proceeded chasing up the SAR further in addition to trying to raise further complaints about not receiving it.  The response from your complaints department stated that the reason NMC did not send me my SAR was because the NMC were actually waiting for me to send in an N1 court claim form in order to request a Judge make an order for you to comply with your legal obligations and send me the SAR.  This response is absolutely ridiculous.
I complained again in relation to not receiving the SAR and your preposterous responses provided, the incorrect dates provided, the NMC stating that the SAR had been provided to me which was false. NMC then stating it was waiting for me to start legal action to get the SAR and that is why it had not been provided.  I was told by one manager from NMC (which I put in writing) that she would pull the phone records of the amount of times I made a request for SAR in addition to written email requests and it would be treated as a complaint. However, needless to say, this remains unanswered.
It must be noted that in relation to the above concerns and complaints surrounding my SAR, it has not been answered apart from ridiculous responses such as NMC were waiting for me to take legal action / waiting for court form for my SAR.

Now turning to the most recent concern with my referral.  I have sent yourselves irrefutable evidence from the nurses employer showing inaccuracies between that of the oral recording and written report. You have evidence of a multitude of inaccuracies, one being a downright lie.  In the oral recording of assessment in which the nurses employers transcribed and you have a copy, it can be clearly seen I discussed what medications I was currently taking via an in-depth discussion. However, the nurse clearly lied and wrote that I am not taking any medication whatsoever.  This is irrefutable evidence which you currently have.  In your findings so far, you do not recognise this and write that I was taking medication and changing.  (need to expand on this point further  –  draft open letter)

In regards to the complaints and concerns that have not been answered, you may check yourself to see that various time limits provided by the NMC to answer were incorrect. I have had to chase these up. Even when you can be bothered to answer, your replies do not address my concerns and complaints and just exacerbate them. To this end I wrote your complaints department a concise list of my complaints along with annotations.  Again, consistency has been shown and the NMC has so far decided to ignore this.  A copy of this is provided below:

Copy of complaint letter sent previously, no answers provided, only a minimal response from Ben Weeson who has ignored my comlaints and concerns yet again.

Hello,

As you have consistently either ignored my concerns or complaints, or at best answered them with an inadequate response or you responded but with error, I have made a summary of the complaints and concerns here. In order to aid yourselves, each summary of point which needs answering is in red text below. 

February 3rd, 2021 I sent yourselves 2 emails detailing my dissatisfaction at a multitude of complaints and concerns which had not been addressed by yourselves or had been addressed inaquaretely.. (These are mainly why it took yourselves 2 years of timewasting investigating the wrong nurse despite my constant phone calls to chase this up, concerns into safeguarding and other elements of complaints / concerns).

I also reminded yourselves that previous complaint sent in December 2020 had been ignored / not responded to despite me chasing this up and being told an acknowledgement and response would be sent to me (I received neither)
I also notified you that my own mental health team had advised me to not pursue any DWP complaints (and by extension this involved my NMC referral). Due to a clear history of NMC failing to address my concerns and complaints (either ignoring them, or at best answering them with each answer just exacerbating the complaints, details in points below), I therefore requested NMC to inform me of what complaints and concerns they intend to respond to in March and to do so by making a reasonable adjustment as defined under the Equality Act, this obviously in relation to my medical health team advice to not pursue or spend a lot of time in pursuing DWP complaints (and by extension, yourselves).
You failed to reply to my emails dated February 3rd 2021, outlined above.
As you had failed to respond to my communications, I therefore sent you email on February 11th 2021 informing you that I have started to make this list myself – the list being concerns and complaints you should have ideally answered during the last few months in addition to historical complaints.

1.      In relation to the above, I would appreciate a response as to whether NMC believed a reasonable adjustment should be made (based upon my medical health teams advice in addition to my experience of NMC clearly failing to respond to complaints previously). If a reasonable adjustment should have been made, then why has NMC ignored this? If a reasonable adjustment should not have been made in respect of my request, then I would appreciate any reasoning given by NMC in regards to why no reasonable adjustment would be made.

 

 

December 16th 2020, Ben Wesson Head of customer enquiries and complaints responded to my concerns and complaints but failed to actually address any of my concerns and complaints. On December 17th 2020, I responded to yourselves via email, an excerpt of this email is as follows:

Despite waiting from August 2020 until present date, you have failed to answer:

 

1.      Why it has taken NMC approximately 2 years to investigate nothing, as had been investigating wrong nurse

2.      Why you have ignored my previous consent forms sent to yourselves last year and again in August 2020 via email.  You evade this element by stating that I had sent consent during October 2020, yet ignore my complaint that you had ignored consent sent in August 2020 and in March 2019.  

3.      Why I have had to spend a multitude of times in contact with your data department to request data to ascertain the delays above, in addition to your response as to why you told me you were waiting for an N1 court claim form in order to process my data request.

4.      Issues of safeguarding have been ignored for the last few years – details of this concern provided to you a multiple of times.

5.      Why you have claimed previously no credible evidence exists, despite such credible evidence existing by way of audio recording in addition to my own medical health team stating nurse is unfit for purpose as well as an independent medical doctor who has stated the same.

6.      Why in your previous complaint response to me you listed 4 dates, each date to be incorrect and causing me to believe there had been a data breach of unauthorised disclosure of my data.

7.      Why I had to endure a protracted amount of time to ascertain further information in regards to said data breach.

There are other elements of my complaint and concerns that remain unanswered, the above just lists some of them.

 

Given the fact that Ben Wesson and other complaints managers / colleagues were supposed to be answering my concerns and complaints that had repeatedly not been answered – or answered but the response just exacerbated my complaints (such ridiculous responses as the reason you did not send me my DSAR was because you were waiting for me to start court action for this, or responses which lists 4 dates each date being incorrect etc etc), clearly the reply from Ben Wesson did not answer my concerns and complaints whatsoever. I find this disingenous.

 

2.      The reply from Ben Wesson (Head of Customer Enquiries and Complaints) should have ideally answered my concerns and complaints, however it is clear that the he did not. Due to my previous concerns being inadequately responded to, I was informed that Ben Weeson would be responding. Why were my concerns and complaints ignored yet again when Ben Wesson was supposed to have been answering previous ignored concerns and inadequately addressed concerns?,Given the fact that I had reiterated your previous responses to be either incorrect / or providing incorrect information / or inadequate responses / or ignoring and not answering and being told that they would be addressed, why then did this response fail to actually address anything?

3.      In addition to the NMC ignoring concerns and complaints up until and including the reply from Ben Wesson, I responded the following day with my dissatisfaction listing some (but not all) of my concerns and complaints which had been ignored yet again. This response was sent to you on December 17th 2020. I chased this complaint up after I had sent it in order to speak with someone who could understand that my concerns and complaints had been constantly ignored and was told an acknowledgement and response would be sent soon. NMC failed to send me both the acknowledgement and response. Why did NMC blatantly ignore this complaint yet again?

4.      In the above email, I also copied the Professional Standards, the governing body of the NMC in an effort to cajole NMC to act accordingly and in addition for Professional Standards to make a note of my continued experience of the NMC deliberately and systemically placing barriers in front of vulnerable people in an effort to dissuade them from pursuing complaints or referrals. In addition to notifying the PSA, I also notified the NMC CEO Office via email of my experience and continued dissatisfaction at your courses of actions. Despite notifying CEO Office, (in addition to previous notifications) it can be seen the CEO Office also ignore complaints / concerns and feedback. Why is this?

 

 

 

On November 13th 2020, I wrote to you the following:

Despite reiterating my complaints and concerns via email and phone calls as you have stated above, they have all been ignored yet again. For example, in conversation with Jennifer Hay, I was told that my complaint of making 26 or 27 phone calls to the FOI team in order to chase up the request would be pulled from the system and looked into. This, along with other concerns and complaints has not been regarded within your response. 

 

5. Despite being told that by complaints manager that my 26 or 27 phone calls in chasing up DSAR would be pulled from the system and looked into, this was not actioned. Why is this?

6.      Leading on from the above, why did your complaint response state that the reason you did not process my DSAR is that you were waiting for an N1 court claim form in order for you to process the DSAR? This clearly shows zero due dilligence. To not process a DSAR request despite a multitude of reminders and then claim the reasons you did not process it is that you were waiting for a court application is derisory at best. Is this the normal course of action NMC follows, to ignore GDPR legislation, ignore multitude of reminders and simply wait for a court order in order to discharge legal obligations? If not, then why was this action shown to myself and why did your complaints response give this reason?

7.      Clearly, this element of my complaint (failed DSAR) has been consistently ignored from August 2020 until present date (and am still waiting response to this complaint) despite the fact that I have repeatedly chased this element of my complaint on a multitude of occasions – each reply from NMC ignoring it or providing preposterous reasons as outlined above. Is there any reason why the NMC have consistently ignored to respond to my complaint despite my endeavors to obtain a response?

 

Again, in November 13th you write the following: You mentioned that there was a delay in us progressing the case involving Nurse Parry. In our last letter, we said that we had asked you to provide consent for us to disclose details of your referral of Nurse Parry in order to continue our investigation. We are grateful that you provided this to us on 30 October 2020. 

 

The above response is in relation to my concern that you had previously ignored the two consent notifications I sent to yourselves in order for you to continue with the fitness to practise referral. I replied back stating that consent had been sent twice previously to which you have ignored, plus the fact that you had received at least one of the consent notifications as you directly replied to the email in which it was sent. Clearly, sending you consent to carry out the referral had been ignored.

8. Despite me stating to yourselves during phone conversations that I had already sent my consent on two different occasions in addition to listing this as part of my converns with the NMC, you have failed again to address this. Why have the NMC ignored the fact that I had previously provided consent? Also, why has this area of my complaint also been ignored a few times despite me reminding yourselves it has not been answered?

9.      I notified the NMC of my current difficulties in sending you the consent form due to Covid-19 and isolating. It took a protracted amount of time for the NMC to inform me that I could send the consent via email. You can check yourselves previous communications via email / phone, this amount of time was in my opinion unacceptable. Why did this happen?

10.  Leading on from the above, when the NMC informed me late last year that I can send my consent via email, I reminded that this had already been done months ago, yet this was still ignored and I had to send again. Clearly, this element in addition to the multitude of other elements highlighted is placing barriers in front of vulnerable people in an effort to dissuade them into pursuing a fitness to practise referral. This is my opinion, unless NMC can respond to this to explain why previous consent notifications had been ignored?

11.  It is my opinion that whilst NMC require consent in order to investigate a referral, there remains the issue of safeguarding. NMC has evidence of a nurse who has falsified medical information in addition to blatantly lying about medical information, NMC should have proceeded with the referral regardless as to whether consent was given or not. Please explain how and why the NMC requires consent in this instance and how safeguarding policies are discharged due to consent being required. The allegations and evidence clearly show the nurse falsidied medical information in addition to blatantly lying, therefore it is my opinion that NMC should have investigated even without consent to disclose.

23.  A flurry of emails from NMC in 2020 detailing delays in investigating the fitness to practise referral, I contacted via phone in response to the emails to ensure that you would listen to the evidence (unlike your previous time), and mentioned the nurses name upon each contact. Why did none of my telephone conversations result in the NMC realise it was investigating the wrong nurse, for example, I mentioned Bethan Hughes, not Erica Bulpin, yet this was ignored on several occasions until mentioning to your colleage “Ade” who quickly recognised that there was a cross purpose investigation. Why did previous colleagues not recognise that the investigation was at cross purposes?

24. Leading on from above, the result of your investigation into this fitness to practise referral (despite it being at cross purpose) was that you could not investigate due to the nurse not being registered with yourselves anymore. Why did you waste months in delaying this investigation and informing me of delays, accepting my telephone calls for you to conclude that you can’t investigate as the nurse is no lnoger registered with yourselves?
With all respect, it takes literally less than a minute to search your own database to see whether a nurse is registered with yourselves. Indeed, I did this myself and I could have confiemed with yourselves much earlier that said nurse was no longer registered, yet, you declde to waste time in sending me notifications of delays to investigation.
Here is a tip for you, it would be prudent of the NMC to actually when conducting a fitness to practise referral that in the run up to the referral NMC colleagues ascertain whether the nurse is on the register or not. Why did you not do this?

 

In conclusion, it is obvious that I believe the NMC is unfit for purpose and follows a course of action by placing barriers in front of vulnerable people in an effort to dissuade them from pursuing fitness to practise referrals, concerns and complaints.
This is clearly evident from a few years ago to present date. The actions shown are consistent despite intervention from your governing body, PSA.

The crux of my concern is that you have for approximately 2 years known of my allegation and my chasing up of a referral in regards to nurse BP. You now have evidence by way of a transcript (made by DWP) of the assessment and you should compare this transcript to the medical report which was derived from the assessment by your nurse.

When you have done this, you will be able to see that the nurse omitted various medical information. You can see the letter from DWP which lists some (but not all) of the medical information that the nurse omitted. I have also provided you with further examples of the evidences which DWP did not list as to omitting medical information. Additionally, I have provided you with an example of where the nurse has purposefully blatantly lied, this lie being in the medical report she writes that I do not take any medication, however contrasted to the transcription of the assessment it can be seen that this is incorrect and I discussed what medication I was taking.

25. The crux of the matter is that it is my opinion (and indeed the opinion of medical professionals) that this nurse is unfit for purpose. Given the fact that I have already wasted approximately 2 years in order for you to investigate and you responding stating that the investigation was at cross purposes and you are now only starting to investigate, how much longer do I need wait for you to conclude your investigation? You now have literal evidence that not only the nurse made a multitude of inaccuracies, but also the fact that the nurse purposefully and blatantly lied in her medical report. There is an issue of safeguarding here – how much longer before you investigate or if not investigate fob me off with other excuses as to why you can not investigate?

 

Kind regards

The above communications show that I have listed my concerns and complaints in bullet point format and numbered. This was so the NMC can easily see my concerns and complaints and not ignore them as they have been doing so.
The response to the open letter from Andrea Sutcliffe is provided below. I would have thought that a CEO / in the knowledge that their incompetence was being blogged about would have actually addressed my concerns and complaints, however as you can see from the reply the concerns and complaints have been ignored.

14 May 2021

Dear <redacted>

Thank you for your email dated 26 March 2021, which included a link to a draft of your
letter addressed to me. This was in response to the response from my colleague,
Ben Wesson, Head of Customer Enquiries and Complaints, dated 16 March 2021. I am
sorry that you have outstanding concerns after receiving Ben’s letter. I can see that,
prior to 16 March 2021, the team had responded to you on three previous occasions.
We know that going through our Fitness to Practise process can be an emotionally
stressful time for people, and I was sorry to read that your mental health has suffered as
a result of your case. I would like to re-iterate that you can contact the independent
care line for support at any time. Please find more information about this here:

https://www.victimsupport.org.uk/more-us/why-choose-us/specialist-services/gmc-and-
nmc-independent-support

You mentioned that I had not written back to you directly in response to your emails that
were addressed to me. I appreciate why this may have been frustrating for you, but
given the detailed nature of the concerns that you raised, our team dedicated to
responding to complaints about our service was very well placed to address the
concerns you raised through our formal complaints process. I am sorry that you are
unhappy with the responses you have received to date, but I hope you understand why
Ben’s team responded to your previous complaints.
I understand that it took us longer than we had hoped to respond to your email dated
17 December 2020, and that Ben explained the reasons for the delay in his letter dated
16 March 2021. I would like to re-iterate our apology for this, and I can assure you that
we did not ignore your concerns, or intend to give you the impression that we were.

You mentioned that you made a number of phone calls to us in the middle of 2020, to
chase us for a response to your Subject Access Request. Our records show that,
during a conversation with my colleague, Nerisse Williams, on 13 August 2020, you
asked whether our decision in your fitness to practise case would be delayed if you
made a Subject Access Request. I note that you had requested to make your request
by post, and that we advised that you may receive a response more quickly if you were
to contact the Customer Information and Data Requests Team by email.
I am sorry that we did not put you in direct contact with the Customer Information and
Data Requests Team in August 2020. If we had done this, we would have been able to
co-ordinate a response to your request much sooner than we did, and I am sorry to
learn that this has compounded the negative impression of our handling of your
concerns. To address this in future, I have asked Ade Obaye, our Head of Quality of
Decision Making, to remind her team of the importance of logging requests with our
Customer Information and Data Requests Team at the earliest possible opportunity.
I note your comments about the N1 claim form, and the way that this affected our
handling of your information request. I can see that, on 14 September 2020, you had a
conversation with Ade, in which she apologised that we had not put you in contact with
our Customer Information and Data Requests Team in August 2020. Our records show
that you suggested you would be taking legal action, as you had not been able to
contact our Customer Information and Data Requests Team. You also mentioned to
Ade that you would make an information request directly, and that Ade did not need to
make a request on your behalf.
I can see that our Customer Information and Data Requests Team has since been in
contact with you in response to your requests, most recently on 4 December 2020.
Please refer to our letter dated 13 November 2020, which included our responses to
your previous requests. If you would like to make additional requests for your personal
data, you can complete the online request form, and see our full contact details here:
https://www.nmc.org.uk/contact-us/data-protection/foi-request/
You raised a concern about our request for your consent to investigate the concerns
about Nurse Parry, which we received on 30 October 2020. You mentioned that you
had sent a consent form previously, which we ignored. I understand that we do not
have a record of this request, but the team would be very happy to look into this further.
If you are able to confirm who you sent the request to and when, the team will gladly
look into this for you.
I note that you said that we should have continued with our investigation, even if you
had not provided us with the consent form. I can appreciate why you were frustrated by
this request. However, obtaining consent to share the details of allegations raised with
us is an important part of our process. This ensures fairness, and allows the parties
involved to provide an accurate response to the allegations. While we can consider
concerns that are raised anonymously, this does make it harder for us to consider a
referral, and may mean we cannot take any action. I can see that we addressed this
point in our earlier letter dated 13 October 2020.

I note that you mentioned that we had investigated the wrong nurse. When my
colleague, James Jafari, Lead Investigator, called you on 23 April 2021, you said that
we had been making enquiries into Nurse Bulpin’s practise, when we should have been
investigating Nurse Parry.
I can see that you notified us of your concerns about Nurse Bulpin and Nurse Parry, and
we considered both of them under our Fitness to Practise process. In the case of
Nurse Bulpin, we are unable to investigate the matter further, because she is no longer
on our register. However, if she seeks to re-join the Register, she would be under
investigation. The investigation into Nurse Parry’s case is ongoing. On 22 April 2021,
you replied to the email from Bola Sangosanya, Case Officer. Bola will consider your
email in full, and refer the case for a re-consideration decision as soon as possible.
Thank you again for getting in touch. I hope this letter addresses your concerns, but
please do contact me again if you have any follow-up queries.
Yours sincerely

Andrea Sutcliffe CBE
Chief Executive and Registrar

Complaint response from Ben Wesson, Head of Customer Enquiries & Complaints

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Following Response from Ben Wesson, Head of customer enquiries & complaints. My annotations are in red. 

16 December 2020

Dear <redacted>
Response to your complaint
Thank you for your email dated 18 November 2020 following our previous response to
you dated 13 November 2020. You have reiterated concerns about our level of contact
with you and our consideration of evidence that you have sent in support of the Fitness
to Practise concerns you have about people on our register.

I have looked into these issues under our corporate complaints process. This included a
review of the cases you have raised with us, and our previous correspondence to you
regarding legal action. For ease of reference, I have responded to your concerns under
the following headings:

Time you have spent contacting us
You mention that you have spent approximately 300 hours making contact with us. We
need to do all we can to make the fitness to practise process as clear and stress-free as
possible for you. Further to your request, one of the things we have done is to only
contact you in writing. I have asked my colleague Bola Sangesanya, Case Officer, to
update you by email on the case involving Nurse Parry.

Our consideration of evidence
In your email you said you were unhappy that we appeared to have ignored evidence
you had sent us about Nurse Parry. I am sorry if we have given you this impression.
You will recall that we were not in a position to investigate your case until we had
received your consent form, which we received on 30 October 2020. Since then, I can
see that Bola wrote to you on 17 November 2020 to confirm the evidence that you
wanted us to consider as part of the case. I appreciate that your concerns about this
nurse are pressing, and that it has taken a long time for the case to reach its current
stage. Unfortunately, receiving a consent form is a necessary requirement in order for
us to investigate most of our cases. Further to receiving your consent form, we are now
making progress with investigating the case.

Incorrect response, you received the consent form on 2 occasions prior to what you state above. Indeed, on one of the occasions consent was sent to you for Bethan Parry, you replied to the email which provided consent – therefore you can not say you did not receive this, Yet, despite this and my constant chasing up, you claim consent was not received. You have purposefully ignored this area of my complaint (the fact you ignore consent forms in an effort to place barriers in front of vulnerable people).  It can not be denied that you have ignored 2 previous consent forms despite me chasing them up.  You attempt to sidestep this area of my complaint by stating that you received consent during October 2020 yet ignore my complaints of yourselves ignoring two previous consent forms sent to you. 

Consideration of legal action
I have noted your comments on how we responded when you said you were
considering taking legal action in relation to the alleged data breach. Our response to
you dated 18 November 2020 clarified our position in relation to the data breach,
namely, that we did not find evidence that a data breach had occurred. However, I can
see that we did not make reference to your email dated 16 October 2020 which you said
was a letter before action. I am sorry that we did not clarify this further in our response.
My colleague Gemma Wickham, wrote to you on 4 November 2020 to explain that the
Customer Enquiries and Complaints Team would respond to the concerns that you had
raised, as we had not found any evidence of the alleged breach and, as such, the
grounds on which you intended to base your claim were not clear.

The grounds on my basis of claim are in my opinion quite clear and have been reiterated to yourselves previously. You have failed under GDPR and Data Protection legislations to provide me with accurate data. You provided me with inaccurate data (data breach). This inaccurate data led me to believe that unauthorised person/s were the recipient of my personal information. During the times I was led to believe this, I contacted NMC on a multitude of occasions (obviously distressed at the thought of my personal information being in the hands of unauthorised person/s).  Despite my contacting NMC on a multitude of occasions, nobody could tell me where my data was nor the likelihood of where my data was. 

I understand that you have concerns about errors made in our communication with you
and about the way in which your referral has been handled which we are trying to
resolve through our corporate complaints process. If it is your intention to pursue a
claim for damages, you would need to follow the pre-action protocol as set out in the
Civil Procedure Rules, giving us at least 14 days to respond to and address your
concerns depending on the applicable protocol.

You will need to set out details of the claim including the basis on which the claim is made, a summary of the facts, and a calculation of any damages you intend to claim. A list of pre-action protocols can be found at the following link:
https://www.justice.gov.uk/courts/procedure-rules/civil/protocol
If you need any further assistance regarding this process I advise that you seek
independent legal advice, either from an independent legal advisor or the Citizens
Advice Bureau.

If you do decide to proceed with legal action, given that our offices are currently closed,
please ensure that copies of any letter before claim are sent by email to
[email protected], copying in [email protected].
However, I do hope that we can avoid litigation and engage constructively to resolve
your concerns.

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

You have failed to answer any of my concerns in relation to my opinion that the NMC is ignoring safeguarding issues / elements. Namely, these are why it has taken NMC approximately 2 years to investigate my fitness to practise referral. Why NMC states it has not received my consent to investigate despite I had already send yoruselves 2 consent forms previously (one of which you can not possibly deny you had as you replied to said email).  Also, why is consent required since the case obviously shows the nurse has failed in several areas including that of blatantly lying, this is backed up by irrefutable evidence.

You have also failed to answer my data protection concerns, namely why it had taken 20 (approx) phone calls and emails to yourself to chase up a DSAR which would show me the delays of investigation. Your previous response is that you were waiting for an N1 court claim form before providing me with my DSAR.  Other responses in regards to this are inconsistent or contradictory, for example stating that you were waiting for court form in order to proceed whilst you also claim it had been previously sent. 

Yours sincerely

Ben Wesson
Head of Customer Enquiries and Complaints

Complaints Response from NMC

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The correspondence below shows a response from NMC in relation to my concerns and complaints, most of which I raised in August 2020. The red text is my reply back to them and also serves as annotations here. As you can see, the NMC have ignored most of the complaint and made matters worse in their responses. The final reply from Ben Wesson, head of customer services is derisory at best and serves nothing other than further proof that the NMC ignore complaints. Correspondences as below: 

The email is in response to my complaint which was raised with the NMC during August 2020. Despite waiting from August 2020 until present date, I am no further forward in regards to my complaints nor concerns. A copy of the email is below along with my annotations in red text.

Thank you for your emails dated 16, 21, 22 October as well as 4 and 6 November 2020. The latter followed a conversation you had with Jennifer Hay, Enquiries and Complaints Manager. I am sorry that you are not happy with the service you have received from us regarding your requests, as well as our last response to you dated 13 October 2020.

Despite reiterating my complaints and concerns via email and phone calls as you have stated above, they have all been ignored yet again. For example, in conversation with Jennifer Hay, I was told that my complaint of making 26 or 27 phone calls to the FOI team in order to chase up the request would be pulled from the system and looked into. This, along with other concerns and complaints has not been regarded within your response. 
I have looked into these issues under our corporate complaints process. This included a review of your emails and discussions with Graham Ostle, Information and Data Requests Manager, Emma Bailey, Contact Centre Manager and Ade Obaye, Head of Quality of Decision Making. Your requests for information in August 2020 You mentioned that you had been chasing an update to your request for information which you made in August 2020. Our records show that you spoke to Ade in August 2020 about your requests. There is a suggestion that you had asked Ade not to submit this on your behalf because you intended to submit a new request yourself, and that you also wanted to send an N1 County Court form to our Information and Data Request Team. This is why we did not respond to your request until you raised it directly with our Information and Data Requests Team. Please be assured that we did not ignore your request in August, but I am sorry if it came across in this way. You suggested that our Data Manager ignored your request in June and July 2020. Please be assured that we did not ignore your request. We understood that you did not want us to process the request you made in August 2020 on your behalf before you had submitted the Court form, but I am sorry if this was not the case.
You have the audacity to assure me that you did not ignore my request in August – despite the fact that I had chased this up with 26 or 27 phone calls to your FOI team plus numerous phone calls to managers and other staff outside the FOI team.
If what you say is correct then why did you tell me it had been responded to in September 2020 given the fact of what you attempt to claim above – that  you understood I did not want you to respond to the request until I had submitted a Court form!!!   This response is preposterous, the court form is to get you to perform and supply me with the request in which I have been chasing up repeatedly.
For NMC to attempt to claim it did not respond to my request and was waiting for an N1 court form in order to respond is simply pathetic reasoning.
In regards to this, I would like clear data in which you came to the conclusion that I do not want you to supply me with the request until I had sent you an N1 form, this obviously shows a lack of due diligence on behalf of the NMC. 
Incorrect dates in our letter dated 13 October 2020
I have seen that the response you received from us on 13 October contained incorrect information about when we responded to your Information requests. I am very sorry for the distress this has caused you.
With all respect, apologies are worthless. I had during the times of believing my data had been sent to unauthorised person/s contacted yourselves repeatedly in order to try and find the likelihood of where the data was, whether it had been sent via courier or email in order to ascertain its whereabouts. Despite requesting to speak with DPO, this failed. Nobody from NMC could tell me where the data was likely to be, managers could not even confirm whether it was sent to be via email or post, neither could they confirm generic details whether you usually send via email or post. You have failed to answer this concern during the times of my distress when I contacted NMC on a multitude of occasions in order to ascertain the likelihood of where my personal information was. 
We said that we received and responded to your Subject Access Request and information request in September 2020. This should have read September 2019.
You have failed to answer as to why your DPO / Data Manager provided this incorrect information in addition to why the complaints team supplied this information. If what you state is true above, that you genuinely believed that I had asked you not to process the request (despite me chasing it up repeatedly), then why state the request had been sent to me in September 2020 in relation to my complaints of not receiving said request.
Clearly the NMC is trying to fob me off in regards to this matter, this can not be refuted – although, I welcome any further explanations for the purpose of my blog. 
You did not receive a Subject Access Request response in September 2020, and I can therefore appreciate that you were anxious about the possibility that we had sent your personal information elsewhere.
Nobody within the NMC could inform me of the likelihood of where my data was actually sent to despite the fact that I had made many repeated phone calls to yourselves during the time that I was led to believe unauthorised person/s were the recipients of my personal information. 
Despite this and my legal letter to you (letter before action) you have failed to respond with any form of remedy in regards to the distress I endured due to your repeated actions of a data breach of inaccurate data which led me to believe a data breach of data being disclosed to an unauthorised person/s had occurred. I clearly sent you a letter before action in this regard which you have blatantly ignored in your response to me despite the fact that your own solicitor requested me to not accept my solicitors terms of business until such time that you could respond to me. I honoured this request and waited for the response to find out that the response was derisory at best. I can confirm that we have not shared your personal information elsewhere.
You can only confirm this since I pointed this out to yourselves stating in response to your reply and reply from data manager in which they stated 2020 again.
Your investigations into the data breach was inaccurate.

We did not write to you, or anyone else, in response to any requests relating to you in September 2020. I am attaching all of the responses to your information requests that we have sent to you to date for reference. In our last response, we did not verify the dates of our responses to you, which is why they appear incorrectly on the letter. We wanted to make sure that you received a response in a timely manner, but I have reminded the team of the significance of our attention to detail. Again, I am sorry for the impact that this error had on you. I hope I have reassured you that we have not shared your personal data with any third party.

This is too little too late. Ideally you should have informed me of this during the first phone call I made to you when I was alarmed and distressed under the belief that you had sent my data to unauthorised recipients. You could have also confirmed this during subsequent phone calls I made to yourselves in regards to this matter but failed to do so. 
When you spoke to Jennifer on 4 November 2020, you made a new Subject Access Request. Jennifer passed this to the Information and Data Requests Team, who will respond by 4 December 2020.

Incorrect, I did not make a new SAR! This is in my opinion just a blatant evasion of the truth in an awful attempt to sidestep this area of complaint.

Jennifer asked me to forward the request I had made in August. This can not be construed as a new request. The request forwarded showed that I had made a previous request prior to August and a written request in August. To take this information and attempt to imply that I had made a new request in addition to your earlier attempts in claiming preposterously that I had requested you to not supply the request is at best disingenuous. 

The case against Nurse Parry 
You mentioned that there was a delay in us progressing the case involving Nurse Parry. In our last letter, we said that we had asked you to provide consent for us to disclose details of your referral of Nurse Parry in order to continue our investigation. We are grateful that you provided this to us on 30 October 2020.
Again, as per your previous response I consider this to be another blatant evasion of the truth. For example, despite my emails and conversations concerning this you have failed to provide any reasoning as to why you had ignored the request I sent you via recorded or registered post in 2018 (or 2019, I need to check these records and my email trail). Furthermore, you have failed to respond to the fact that I had been chasing up referral for Nurse Parry during the last 2 years and why it has taken yourselves 2 years to tell me that you had not received consent.
It is almost as if you ignore consent, for example, consent was then sent to yourselves in August 2020 via email which you had received as you replied to it.In addition to the above and leading on from the above, you have failed to answer why it has taken NMC 2 years to investigate the wrong nurse despite me chasing up the correct referral.  
Neither have you answered my concern that whilst you had been investigating the wrong nurse as you were at cross purposes in relation to the referral, then why it took you 2 years and lately extensive contact with Ade in relation to a referral in regards to a previous nurse that is no longer registered with youselves.
I could have informed you about a year or more ago that said nurse was no longer employed as a RN – this is essentially public information and such information can be gleaned from your website. Despite this, your team essentially wasted its and my time as did not perform this simple check.Leading on from the above and in order to assist the NMC in not wasting its time, then I would like to make a suggestion that any ftp proceeding to investigation is at all times linked to whether the nurse is indeed registered with yourselves or not. Afterall, this can be done automatically via your computer systems and would save people waiting 2 or so years for something that can not be investigated in addition to saving NMC time in phone calls trying to understand the case.Had you done this, then this investigation would have closed over a year ago.
Charlotte Spink, Decision Review Manager, acknowledged this on 5 November 2020 and advised you that a Screening Officer will be in contact with you shortly about the next steps.
You have failed to answer my concerns in relation to safeguarding. This is, NMC has evidence that a RN is working with vulnerable people, that the RN lies and falsifies medical information to the detriment of vulnerable people, that a government department has listed some but not all of the lies in addition to all of the lies being listed by my own medical health team.
Where is your due diligence shown in order for you to adhere to your own safeguarding policy?Given the fact that I have been chasing this up for around 2 years (albeint at cross purposes with yourselves for the duration of this time despite me naming the nurse) – plus the fact that consent was sent previously either last year or the year before, in addition to consent being sent again in August 2020, you only acknowledge that consent was given in November 2020. Why is this?
It is almost as if NMC is placing deliberate barriers in this instance, however, given this and my other complaints it is blatantly obvious that barriers are being placed and this is systemic course of actions within the NMC
Our method of contact with you In your email dated 20 October 2020, you mentioned that you no longer wish to receive phone calls from us. I confirm that we will not contact you on the phone unless otherwise advised by you.
The only time you have had permission to contact me via phone was the few times I was trying to deal with this complaint via managers or other call handing staff. It was imperative your DPO contacted me via phone, however, they failed to do this in order to appease my worries of missing data.
The purpose of not wanting phone calls is in respect of my mental health and daily battles to overcome problems. There are only certain times of the day or certain days I would be adequately able to deal with phone calls. If you can appreciate, dealing with systemic incompetence for 3 years already does not help my mental health. However, I intend to pursue the complaint and concerns in an effort to go some way in showing the NMC its failings and it can act accordingly to prevent such failings. 
We would be more than happy to implement any other adjustments in the way we contact you in order to reduce the potential stress that you may experience during the fitness to practise process.
Actually investigate it would be more than ideal. Given the fact that I have this year spent in my estimation around 300 hours in writing emails and phone calls with yourselves, it would be more prudent if you use this time to investigate concerns which are detrimental to vulnerable members of the public. For example, my rather conservatve estimation of 300 hours wasting time with yourselves this year has done absolutely nothing in the progression of the crux of the matter, the ftp referral.
It would take NMC literally 5 minutes to read the evidence presented by DWP in order to see that the nurse has lied to the detriment of a vulnerable person and has lied on more than one occasion. Contrast this 5 minutes to my estimation of 300 hours on pointless communications – this simply shows further that NMC is unfit for purpose, treats vulnerable public with contempt and puts the nursing profession into disrepute. 
Please write to me if you have any such requests.
My request is more or less outlined above,that is to stop wasting time in a futile process of wasting my time in investigating a wrong nurse and a nurse you can not investigate as is no longer registered; this fact I could have pointed out to yourself a year or so ago.
My request is also for you to recognise my safeguarding concerns and expedite the referral based on the fact that you should have been doing this over the last 2 years or so in addition to that it would only take yourselves less than 5 minutes to ascertain in no unclear terms that the nurse had deliberately falsified medical information. DWP points this out. You have also been informed of the DWP evidence previously, repeatedly in addition to informing you of my own medical team pointing out extensively as well as outside my own medical team – an independent GP who has pointed out this is systemic abuse.
In other words, and without trying to sound rude, govern yourselves accordingly and do your jobs of protecting vulnerable members of the public and not putting the nursing profession into disrepute in your repeated failure to investigate serious concerns which are evidenced. 
It can clearly be seen that one complaint with NMC leads to a tangent of other complaints whilst the crux of the matter is not progressed – this can also be seen on a multitude of occasions. 
Thank you again for getting in touch. Please contact our Customer Enquiries and Complaints team at complaints@nmc-uk.org if you need any further clarification.
I have pointed out some but not all of my complaints and concerns which you have not addressed above, however, this is only in response to your reply to me.
There are other elements which have not been addressed which I may or may not point out to you in due course, however you can see these other elements which you have ignored as per my past email and phone communications.
For example, I requested FOI using a keyword search,  I said keyword search to pre-empt your excuse that you can not supply the data as it is not a hardcoded category. You have failed to supply this data. You simply respond with an excuse saying it cant be provided as the data is not hardcoded, however, as per my request i did not ask for data hardcoded, i asked for a keyword search and did so in order to pre-empt your excuse of not providing said data. Despite this, you still respond with the excuse despite me pre-empting said excuse. You have failed also to provide any form of follow up in regards to my appeal in this matter.
I draw your attention to a reply from Gemma, NMC lawyer in which she states:  “Thank you again for raising these issues and I do apologise that you have found the process challenging. We are taking your concerns seriously.”   Evidently, this is not the case. If you took my concerns seriously you would have provided substantive response to all my concerns. In turn, all I have received is a preposterous response to my concerns which does not even address all of them.   Furthermore, if you took my concerns seriously then in regards to my letter before action in addition to me notifying yourselves that it would be my intention to proceed with legal action via the same solicitor who is taking legal action against DWP for their data breach, then you would have made some form of effort to appease me via remedy – ie, payment for damages.  Clearly, not taking my concerns seriously as it can be seen that your lawyer has negated this fact and has not made any effort to provide remedy in order to prevent me from seeking legal action.
As discussed with yourselves on the phone earlier today, it is my intention to proceed with legal action and that I would do so today by sending email back to the same solicitors dealing with DWP to accept their terms of business. However, I have decided against this at this moment in time simply because I know I will not handle the process of explaining extensively to the solicitor or his case handles the process and statements and knowing that I have to keep up with their demands to proceed, knowing i have to answer promptly their requests for informations and statements. If I do not do so, (as in the current case of DWP) they will inform me that they consider I have broken their nowin nofee agreement and then I am liable for their costs.
Having said the above, whilst I am not in the position to do this at the moment (as i wrongly adivsed on phone that i would do so today), it will be my intention to do so in the future. Ideally, i would like to wait for the current legal case against DWP to conclude.  This however does not preclude me from initiating proceedings with no further reference to yourselves. 
Please note the fact that the solicitor has stated their claim would be related to the manner in which you dealt with GDPR both before and after the data breach. They are only accepting the case based on the data breach but have indicated that as part of the claim they would give regards to the DSAR and your course of actions surrounding this also.  In my opinion and solicitors opinion your course of actions have been failure so far.
Your latest response to me (this response) was supposed to take my concerns seriously, you have failed to do so. 
I have informed you that I would be blogging about my experiences with yourselves.
I have informed you that PSA have requested copies of complaints / letters.
I have informed you that its my intention to proceed with legal action unless you provide remedy.
I have informed you about my issues concerning your lack of safeguarding.
Despite all of the above, it is clear that you are not taking my complaints and concerns with the merit they deserve.
I can only shudder at the thought of other vulnerable people pursuing your unfit for purpose processes as the majority can not adequately able to pursue complaints and concerns. 
Given the fact that this complaint response was a direct action of my previous complinat in that previous response was not substantive, it is at best derisory and a blatant attempt to not answer said concerns and complaints and simply fob me off – at least you are consistent.
The logic of telling me you had not proceeded with DSAR and waiting for me to make a claim for you to proceed with it is laughable.

You can choose to reply to this or not, bearing in mind that I now have zero confidence in NMC‘s abilities to be fit for purpose. It is clear now that the only remedy I have is to accept my solicitors terms of business in addition to preparing for a judicial review for when you provide me with further lies or excuses (as you did in 2017) as to why you cant investigate the referral.

Any reply, or lack of reply will of course be blogged. 

 

Failed Data Request DSAR

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In August, I reminded NMC that I am waiting for my Subject Access Request, I also reminded NMC of this in September and October.
I was even told by a manager on one occasion that I would receive my request later that day.  In a response to a complaint, a Data Protection Officer / Manager responded. The response is below as is my reply to their response.
My reply back to NMC is provided in the same text as Bold.

 

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 <name redacted, Manager> earlier today you advised that there was a response which you received in September 2019.

Incorrect. <name redacted, Manager>  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 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. 

 

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

<<Name redacted>>

Information & Data Requests Manager

People and Organisational Effectiveness

NMC failing to investigate despite evidence from retired Policeman

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An NHS whistleblower was let down by his hospital trust, the NHS regulators & the NMC (Nursing & Midwifery Council) whose purpose is to protect the public.

The retired policeman was called to investigate a safeguarding issue. The retired policeman “Paul” (not his real name) was part of a temporary group of workers used by the NHS in order to investigate certain cases.

He found that the NHS trust had failed to act on his report findings. Paul gave evidence to the NMC (Nursing & Midwifery Council) in regards to the fact that his report had been deliberately altered. Despite this, the NMC concluded that the concerns were unsubstantiated.  (Excerpt from NMC response in below image)

Image above and further reading here: https://bylinetimes.com/2020/09/24/perversion-of-justice-the-abandoned-nhs-whistleblower/