"Lack of response from Complaints Department"

I am still, some five and a half months on, awaiting the comprehensive reply to a complaint submitted on 5 October 2013 regarding aspects of my mother's treatment up to her death in August 2013 that I have been promised in several holding replies. On 17 February a Complaints Dept. officer apparently promised the Health Service Ombudsman Officer who had contacted her on my behalf that she would contact me urgently to renegotiate another deadline for a response but no further contact has been made. I suspect that the fact that said Ombudsman Officer made it clear that my case had not yet been adopted as an official Ombudsman complaint ( evidently they feel that such timescales for replies are neither unusual or unacceptable) has sent out the message that they can take as long as they like and that my complaint has been shelved. Very poor practice and unacceptable.