Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust says it has turned a corner since leaving NHS England’s Recovery Support Programme in November 2025. Yet its own FOI-Response-0584—PALS-and-Complaints-Handling-Since-September-2018 tells a very different story.

Between September 2018 and October 2025, GMMH received 5,846 PALS concerns and 5,516 formal complaints. But when asked one of the most basic questions—how long people wait for a response—the Trust’s answer was astonishing:

It doesn’t know.

According to the FOI response, GMMH does not hold information on:

• average complaint acknowledgement times;
• longest acknowledgement times;
• average final response times; or
• longest final response times.

It also says it cannot say how many complaints progressed beyond local resolution because retrieving the information would exceed the FOI cost limit.

That is not a minor administrative oversight. It is a governance failure.

Patients, carers and bereaved families should not have to submit Freedom of Information requests to discover whether an NHS trust measures its own complaints performance. These are routine management metrics that should be published openly.

Even more concerning is the response received this week from Greater Manchester Integrated Care Board. The ICB states that complaints management forms part of its quality oversight arrangements.

But how can meaningful oversight exist if the provider cannot produce the most basic performance data?

How many people are still waiting for responses to complaints first submitted in 2023—or even earlier?

Does GMMH know?

Does the ICB know?

If neither organisation can answer those questions, public assurance begins to look very thin.

National reviews have already warned that NHS complaints systems suffer from poor transparency, weak leadership and inadequate learning. Healthwatch England called for mandatory reporting of complaints performance because delays and poor data undermine confidence in the NHS complaints process.

For CHARM, the next step is clear.

The ICB and NHS England should be asked to explain:

• why GMMH is not collecting and publishing basic complaints performance data;
• how the ICB provides effective oversight without it; and
• who is accountable for patient experience and complaints performance across Greater Manchester.

A Trust that has emerged from special support should be able to answer one simple question:

How long are patients and families waiting for justice?

At present, it appears nobody can.