It's been a very busy week. I had an hour with the consultant and it was actually helpful. She diagnosed vascular dementia with, sadly, a prognosis of 6-12 months. She recommended admission to an EMI home with nursing facilities. Since then I have moved my father into a specialist dementia nursing home and he is settling in well. As he has savings we are paying £1,100 a week of which £110 will probably be paid by the NHS for the nursing element of his care. I had to ask three times for a continuing care assessment and one was done just before he left hospital. It's being posted to me. I was told several times that he almost certainly wouldn't qualify but I had more of a sense of budgets being defended than anything else. I'll decide what to do when I get the paperwork. Right back at the beginning of all this I said that I wasn't particularly interested in seeking compensation but given the costs that my family is faced with I want to revisit this. The problem is that I don't know where routine lousy NHS treatment starts and actionable negligence begins. I am waiting for the results of complaints but I would be interested in any views. The specific issues are: 1) A delay of an hour and 41 minutes before the ambulance turned up when my Dad had his fall. He had a serious head wound but was conscious. It seems to me that the ambulance service was playing russian roulette with the health of a 92 year old man. The delay does not seem to have had serious health consequences but it could have done so. I suppose the other question is whether the fall might have been caused by the mini strokes my father seems to have been having and whether quicker treatment would have reduced their impact. 2) The failure of the Trust to place my father in an appropriate ward. They left him in a noisy and confusing acute ward and denied him access to a geriatric ward based on his post code. 3) The acute kidney failure during my father's recent hospital stay caused by the use of antibiotics to treat an infection that he didn't have. I suspect that there's nothing here that's actionable. However, I would like to find a way to persuade the NHS to fund more of the nursing home fees assuming that they turn down continuing care.

No the claimant apparently had a conversation with the driver of the vehicle, "Paul Hudson", who shares the same first name as me. There's no question of the vehicle driving off and I would have expected the claimant to have recorded the make and model of the vehicle. Direct Line have asked a number of questions including a description of the driver. These have gone unanswered. The claimant's solicitors have simply asked for my name and address. I fully appreciate that the claimant has no case but their failure to deal with this efficiently is irritating. As far as I can tell all the solicitor has done is submit a claim with a letter asking for my contact details and to subsequently request my contact details again. I think it's pretty clear what their agenda is and I intend to respond in kind.

Yep I know that and I think the claimants got the details either from those sources or from the Autotrader ad that was running at the time. In any event, it's unacceptable to be left in limbo like this. The claimaint's solicitors have had long enough to justify a claim. All they have done so far is to ask for my name and address.

Well, my insurance company has just told me that the claimants have identified the vehicle involved in the "accident" as being the same make and model as my car. Either the solicitor was sloppy when the looked up the reg or the claim is fraudulent. In any event I'm off to give a witness statement to the police.

Well that was interesting. I had a voicemail from the consultant (I was on the phone when she rang). I called straight back but she had left the ward. Apparently I might be able to catch her on the ward between 10 and 11am tomorrow or more likely Thursday. The other doctors can't discuss my Dad's future with me. Not stressful at all. I'd like to see a private healthcare provider work like that but what should expect for £5k in tax a year. I've found the consultant's email address on the hospital web site and I'm quite tempted to write to her...

Thanks again. I've actually taken a slightly different route. So far when I've asked for things to be noted I seem to have been ignored or at least they are really bad at proactively feeding back. I've therefore emailed PALS with a series of questions set out below and asking that they pass this on to the relevant person. 1) I have been told on at least three occasions that my father’s current acute kidney failure was caused by the antibiotics he was given when he went to A&E on 15 October. Please could you confirm this and whether he was suffering from a kidney infection when he was given the antibiotics? 2) Are you able to determine the extent to which my father’s current confusion/ delirium is due to the kidney problem rather than any cognition/ dementia issues? 3) Please confirm whether, if antibiotics were used inappropriately, this will have a long term impact on his cognition/ behaviour. If this cannot be determined at this stage, please confirm when you will be able to make this assessment. 4) My father was diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment by the Memory Clinic in May. Please could you confirm whether this has now evolved into dementia and, if so, please provide a differential diagnosis of the type of dementia. 5) If my father has dementia please confirm that you will develop a treatment plan including medication, if appropriate. 6) Please confirm whether my father currently has capacity to determine his future care arrangements. If, as I believe, he does not do so currently, please confirm that this will be tested again as part of the discharge process? My father has previously expressed very clear views about his care arrangements and where he wants to live. I appreciate that the situation has moved on but I would not want a temporary impairment of his faculties through a kidney problem to mean that his wishes are overridden. 7) The doctor I spoke to yesterday said that my father’s psychiatric assessment had resulted in a recommendation for an emergency placement and financial screening. I am extremely disappointed that I had to ask about this rather than be contacted. I am the next of kin and I would expect to be involved in the discharge decision making process. Before any decisions are made I would expect you to diagnose my father’s condition and determine the impact of his kidney problems on his care needs. I would also expect you to undertake a Continuing Care assessment especially if my father has an ongoing high level of confusion caused by his kidney failure. 8) If my father lacks capacity in the long term I want to be involved in determining how his care should be provided. In particular my wife and I would be happy for him to move in with us provided that we could arrange an appropriate level of care. Clearly this would not be possible if he has long term behavioural issues that could only be addressed in a care or nursing home environment. Please confirm that the hospital/ social services will produce a care plan based on his diagnosis before he is discharged.

Thanks MM. I've decided to ask for a meeting with my father's consultant. I have no complaints about individual members of staff at the hospital but it's impossible to consistently speak to the same doctor. It also doesn't help that the start of the evening visiting hours coincides with a nursing and care shift change. Part of the reason for meeting the consultant is that I'm none too pleased with the discharge arrangements they seem to be making. I have asked several times whether my father has dementia and for a differential diagnosis if he does. The psychiatric team assessment simply resulted in a recommendation for an emergency placement and a financial screening. No mention of a diagnosis, a continuing care assessment, care plan or liaison with me as next of kin.

I've now had letters from both the London Ambulance Service and Kings saying that they aren't able to respond to my complaints within their normal timescales as they are waiting for information. Never mind I'm patient. Unfortunately my father is unwell again and has been in hospital for two weeks. His GP suggested that he should have some blood tests done after visiting him at home. He was taken to his local hospital in an ambulance. We waited for a couple of hours in A&E and he was then taken to a cubicle. His blood tests were fairly normal but they decided to give him iv antibiotics in case the kidney infection had come back. In the meantime my father because quite upset. He didn't know why he was there and wanted to go home. This got worse and worse the longer he waited. The doctor said he could go home once the antibiotics had been administered. By this time my father had become very confused and believed he was already at home. As he refused to use a wheelchair I then had the unpleasant experience of seeing the doctor and nurse (and eventually security) trying to literally walk my dad out of the hospital. Without going into more detail, they eventually decided that he was unsafe to go home and admitted him. It turns out that he didn't have a kidney infection and the antibiotics they gave him have caused kidney failure. His creatinine levels have peaked at 266 and are now slowly coming down. The kidney failure seems to have caused even more confusion. The whole experience has been numbing. I appreciate that mistakes can be made but the consequences have been extremely unpleasant.

Thanks for this. It's actually more serious than that. They a) accused me of causing a 4 person personal injury accident and b) the solicitors threatened to sue "Paul Hudson" personally. I'm not sure what the endgame is. I am not going to allow this issue to fade away. If they proceed, I'll deal with that. If they don't I want an acknowledgement of the hassle they have caused me.

Well today's the day when DL said they would get back to me. I gave them a call and they are still waiting for a reply from the claimant's solicitors. DL believe this means that the claim is in trouble and they are likely to view it as abortive if they don't receive a reply by the 3 month anniversary of the accident on 3 November. If this happens then I would like to seek an apology and reimbursement of my costs from the claimant or their solicitor. I know this may seem over-zealous but I am angry at having this hanging over me at the same time as dealing with the serious illness of my father. I appreciate that this may be a mistake but simply withdrawing without an explanation or apology is unacceptable. Am I within my rights to ask for the solicitors reference number for the claimant so that I can write to them directly?

Thanks SuperVillain. I'm a lot calmer now. Just waiting until 24 October which is when DL have said that they'll get back to me. I was interested to read your comments about Scott Rees and I think you're right about them. They are too large to be intentional parties to a fraud and I am expecting this to go away. The fact that it's taking them so long to respond to DL suggests that they may be having problems.

Fair point. An alternative approach would be to press release the letter and see whether any of the local papers bite. The problem here is that most people pay these invoices because they are ignorant of the law. They look like Council documents and everyone knows that ignoring a council parking ticket is dangerous. The question TS should have asked is not how many complaints they have received but how many of these tickets are issued. The answer is certainly in the thousands if not the tens of thousands in Surrey. The fundamental problem here is that TS think small. I'm prepared to bet that if a small local business issued invoices like this, TS would descend on them like a ton of bricks.

Further to your request for investigation at stage 2 of the council’s complaints procedure, your complaint has been forwarded to me for response as agreed. As the appointed Complaints Investigator I can make one of the following decisions: -  Arrange for an investigator, who is independent of the service you are complaining about, to carry out a further investigation.  Refer the complaint back to the service you are complaining about with a request to reconsider all or specific parts of your complaint  Decide not to carry out a further investigation where I consider one or more of the following apply:  your complaint was properly dealt with at stage 1  there is no evidence of failure by the council in delivering its services; this includes failure to follow law, government guidance, the council’s own policies, procedures and best practice.  further investigation would not result in the outcome you are seeking  there is an alternative route for resolution My understanding of the issues you raised following the Stage one investigation is that: 1. You believe that Trading Standards have not done anything with your complaint or taken it seriously enough especially as the penalty documentation resembles the Police’s format and is misleading. 2. You feel that your complaint does satisfy two criteria for intervention and you feel that Surrey Trading Standards should follow it up. 2 Background Role of Trading Standards: Trading Standards are responsible for enforcing a wide range of consumer protection laws in order to protect the public against rogue traders and traders who have acted unfairly. These laws create criminal offences for which a trader could potentially be prosecuted by Trading Standards; such a prosecution could potentially result in a fine and/or a custodial sentence. Trading Standards can undertake a variety of actions other than prosecution including: advising and educating traders who may not even be aware that they have been breaking the law; and offering advice and help to consumers. As Trading Standards services are organised locally, the way in which they carry out this role depends on the enforcement policy operated by the Trading Standards service in the local area. The action Trading Standards can take against a trader depends on what the trader has done and on their own local policy. Enforcement activity Surrey County Council Trading Standards have clear criteria that they use when assessing complaints and enquiries and when deciding on enforcement and investigation activity. Resources for investigations are limited and, as a result, only a small proportion of complaints made to Trading Standards will lead to further investigation. In order to decide which referrals to investigate, Trading Standards apply their Investigation and Intervention policy. Given the volume of referrals they receive, Trading Standards cannot look into every referral so have had to develop these criteria to evaluate which referrals to look into further. This policy is regularly reviewed and the current version is available in the public domain on the council’s website. The Investigation and Interventions policy details a comprehensive and objective set of criteria that officers would have used at the time of your complaint to make their assessment. Furthermore, Trading Standards Officers also use the Surrey County Council’s Trading Standards Enforcement Policy as a method of determining the course of action pertaining to enquiries and issues. I have considered all the information available to me and I am writing to let you know of my preliminary decision and to invite your comments. Taking each of your complaint issues in turn: 1. You believe that Trading Standards have not done anything with your complaint or taken it seriously enough especially as the penalty documentation resembles the Police’s format and is misleading. I have reviewed the documentation relating to your complaint and I have scrutinised the action that Surrey Trading Standards have undertaken and I can confirm that they have shared the details of your complaint (through National intelligence gathering systems) with the Trading Standards pertinent to the registered office of Smart Parking Ltd. This is located in Perthshire, Scotland. I can confirm that to date, during 2013, there has been 1 report in the Surrey area made via Surrey Trading Standards and 52 reports made from across the UK directly to Perthshire regarding the company in question. I cannot comment as to what action the relevant Trading Standards team in Perthshire are undertaking based upon this level of enquiry, as that is outside of my jurisdiction. 2. You feel that your complaint does satisfy two criteria for intervention and you feel that Surrey Trading Standards should follow it up. As detailed above, Trading Standards (Surrey) have only received your complaint relating to this company. In itself this is not enough evidence to bring about enforcement action. The council’s complaints process does not generally question the reasonable professional judgments taken by officers if the decision has been properly taken, and is in line with their policies and procedures. On scrutinising the related information and considering your 3 comments, I cannot find that the officers involved have, in any way, acted unreasonably or unfairly and have applied assessment criteria in an appropriate way. Conclusions: I am sorry that you feel that Trading Standards in Surrey have not responded seriously enough to your complaint or taken the level of action you are seeking. I am recommending that Surrey County Council take no further action in respect of your complaint. This is because I have found no evidence of failure by the council in its decision to not pursue this matter, and it is my view that any further investigation would not result in the outcome you are seeking. However, I will ensure your concerns are shared with the appropriate officers in Trading Standards (Perthshire) to help inform their decision making. If you have evidence in support of your complaint that I have not yet seen or comments that you think may be relevant, please send them to me within the next two weeks. Please let me know if you need more time to respond. If I do not hear from you within the next two weeks I will record this complaint as closed. Yours sincerely, Louise Furneaux Customer Service and Relationship Officer

Earlier this year we received a speculative invoice masquerading as a parking ticket from Smart Parking. I simply wrote to Smart Parking explaining the legal position and they immediately cancelled the invoice. Given what I've read here and the document they sent I thought I would pursue the matter through my local Trading Standards. Having passed the matter through Consumer Direct, I heard precisely nothing. I had to ask twice to even get a TS reference number. I eventually made a complaint which was fobbed off. I have posted the level 2 complaint I made below and I have set out the response to the level 2 complaint in the next post. I intend to go back at them again and then refer the matter to the Ombudsman. I write with reference to my complaint referenced above and to the letter dated 18 September 2013 sent to me by Lee Ormandy, Business Intelligence and Legal Manager. I note that Mr Ormandy’s letter concludes Stage 1 of your complaints process and I now wish to escalate this matter to Stage 2. By way of background my original complaint to Citizens Advice was regarding a “Parking Charge Notice” received through the post from Smart Parking Limited also known as Town and City Parking. My concerns were: 1) This document is designed to resemble a Penalty Charge Notice issued by a local authority when it merely has the legal status of an invoice. 2) The Parking Charge Notice was issued to me as the registered keeper of the vehicle but given that it is an invoice and governed by contract law, it should only be issued to the driver at the time the incident occurred. As such, sending it to the registered keeper means that it is a speculative invoice. 3) The Parking Charge Notice contains the following sentence: “This may result in a summons or writ being raised for recovery of the outstanding Parking Charge Notice”. This is clearly intended to mislead the recipient as to the company’s recovery powers. Given that this is governed by contract law, the correct recovery route is through the county court and this is extremely unlikely to result in any form of summons or writ but rather a county court claim. In my opinion this sentence implies that the company can recover the invoice balance through the magistrate’s court which it clearly cannot. 4) Private parking companies such as Smart Parking Limited very rarely pursue county court claims and hardly win any that they do. This is because they are rarely able to identify the person they should sue to the satisfaction of the court and under contract law, the amount claimed cannot exceed the actual loss incurred. It is very hard to demonstrate losses equivalent to the £60 to £100 set out in the Parking Charge Notices. When I received my Parking Charge Notice I replied setting out many of the points above and challenged the company to commence legal proceedings. Within seven days they cancelled the Parking Charge Notice. I referred this matter to Trading Standards through Citizens Advice because I was concerned that companies such as Smart Parking Limited are attempting to secure payment of speculative invoices designed to resemble council documents and threatening legal remedies that they could not, in fact pursue. I was extremely disappointed that it took two attempts to obtain a Trading Standards case reference for this matter and then to find that I did not receive any acknowledgement or reply from Trading Standards. Having raised a stage 1 complaint I was astonished to find that my request for any documents relating to this matter produced no results. It is clear that Trading Standards have done absolutely nothing in response to my complaint except perhaps to include it within a statistical return. As a council tax payer this falls well short of what I would expect. I note that Trading Standards claim that they are unable to pursue all cases and that they apply criteria in their selection process. Having reviewed those criteria I believe that my complaint satisfies two of them: 1) Given the number of private parking tickets issued nationally, this matter will certainly affect thousands of Surrey residents each year because other private parking companies issue almost identical documents. 2) Many residents will pay these tickets because they believe that they are legally required to do so. This is particularly true of elderly, young and other vulnerable residents who are unaware of the legal status of the document they receive. I would be obliged if you would consider this as a stage 2 complaint.

I went to an old school friend's 50th birthday party at the weekend. He happens to be a Surrey police officer and based on the facts as I know them, he is certain that this will turn out to be a fraudulent claim and that I will end up either with a fight on my hands or the claimant doing a runner. I'm going to wait until I hear back from DL but I feel another witness statement coming on.

Hi. No the date of the alleged incident was before the car was sold. We were in fact waiting for someone to come to see the vehicle late that afternoon.

Yep. That's precisely what they are trying to do. It's a thoroughly misleading letter that should be ignored and reported. I also can't help thinking that it breaches the DPA in some way.

Thanks for this. The Autotrader database does show the colour so I'm surprised it's not in the insurance databases. I'll mention the CCTV issue to DL. It had crossed my mind before but I'd forgotten about it. I discussed possible plate cloning with the insurance assessor and with my friend the police officer. Both said it was possible but a bit less likely with such an old vehicle. From a very narrow selfish point of view, it would explain a lot and make the issue go away. It would be a ridiculous coincidence if a cloned plate was attached to the same make, model and colour of vehicle.

A quick update. Not much has happened but I've had a conversation with Direct Line and I am satisfied that they they are doing their best to resolve matters. They have responded to the claimant's solicitors asking for basic information about the make and model of the car. They expect that matters will come to a head by the end of this month. I'm happy with this. Two things are bothering me at the moment: 1) When the claimant's solicitors worked out who to write to they would have had as a minimum the registration number of the vehicle. They would have used this to identify the insurer to write to in an insurance database. Is anyone familiar with these databases? For a registration number would they show the make and model of the vehicle? I ask this because I would expect the claimant's solicitor to ask for information about this before making a claim. I would expect them to check the make and model if shown in the database against the claim details and not to issue a claim unless they were consistent. They have a duty of care to their client and a responsibility to deal with the matter properly. Edit: They could of course check the make and model of the vehicle simply by keying the reg into Auto Trade or other sites but I would be interested in knowing if it's included in the information extracted routinely from whatever insurance databases are out there. 2) Apparently the claimant's solicitors have threatened to sue "Paul Hudson" (the name given by the driver) personally. I believe they did this in the one and only letter they sent to Direct Line. Is this normal? I don't actually have any problem with this because they have no case whatsoever.

Check your credit file. It's more than likely that the £10k debt was sold to a debt collection agency and then written off in Nat West's books.

Absolutely. They don't get off that easily. In fact, I'm a little annoyed that they didn't offer any assistance with the heading aids before this. They could have supplied a temporary solution but they never offered because, I guess, it would have been a partial admission of liability. The crux of the matter is that they denied access to a specialist ward that could have dealt with my father's confusion better ( and reduced the chances of the hearing aids being lost) on the basis of his postcode. As Sali mentions above, it's more than likely that I will end up screaming at the moon about this.

We had a victory yesterday. The hospital has agreed to pay for the replacement hearing aids. I don't think they had much choice but it's welcome nonetheless.

I thought that might be the case. I can't find much on the web about how this plays out if the claimants don't ignore. I guess I can stop my insurer from settling but if the claimant doesn't withdraw, what happens?

Well so far DL have done very little and it makes me nervous. I think I'll drop them a letter along those lines without asking specific questions. I can understand why they might not want to provide a copy of the letter for that reason provided I can be assured that my identity is being kept confidential from the claimants.

Having now spoken to the assessor again, the claimant's solicitors are Scott Rees & Co from Lancashire. They seem to be a typical no win no fee firm but quite sizable. Up until now I've been quite passive in my dealings with Direct Line. Having made my witness statement I would expect DL to make the necessary enquries so that I can see whether I'm dealing with a simple mistake or an aggressive fraudulent claim. Am I within my rights to request a copy of the letter from the solicitors and to separately demand that DL ask some specific questions? Am I allowed to directly deal with the solicitors?