Tuesday September 30th 2025
Elliot Richardson with his father, Chris, and his brother
Written by Midlothian View Reporter, Liam Eunson
NHS Borders has apologised after a six-year-old boy with a painful throat condition was faced with a two year delay to undergo a simple procedure.
After several months of waiting, Elliot Richardson, who was suffering from swollen tonsils, had an appointment at Borders General Hospital with an Ear, Nose and Throat (ENT) consultant in March this year.
But at the appointment his parents were informed that the youngster would have to wait up to two years for an operation.
Unwilling to allow their son to suffer any longer the family decided to pay for a private procedure which was carried out at the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle, for what was deemed a “routine” operation costing £2,500.
The procedure itself took less than an hour and Elliot was released after spending half a day on the unit.
Elliot’s father, Chris, subsequently launched a complaint with the BGH over excessive waiting times.
However, his frustrations were accentuated after being told that it would take 41 days to respond to the complaint itself – against a target response time of 20 working days.
In the event it took a total of 77 working days for Mr Richardson to receive a formal response from NHS Borders.
In that response from Sarah Horan, NHS Borders Director of Nursing, Midwifery and Allied Health Professionals, she states: “Please accept my apologies for the delay in responding to your concerns.
“Regrettably, because of the extreme pressure all our services are currently experiencing, our Patient Experience Team is experiencing a higher volume of complaints currently.
“However, we have provided additional capacity to the team to support us with the workload.”
In response to the waiting list delays, she adds: “Regrettably, the current routine waiting time for paediatric ENT surgery is around 18 months.
“We fully appreciate that this is a lengthy wait and adds to the stress for parents and patients awaiting surgery and for this we are very sorry.
“NHS Borders is currently working hard to reduce this waiting time and have invested in additional operating capacity to support a reduction. We are working toward a maximum one year wait for routine patients by March 2026.
“Most NHS Boards have failed to meet this standard for routine patients requiring surgery since the significant growth in waiting times in 2020 and 2021.
“We are seeing improvement in routine waiting times and are continuing to work on bringing waits down as capacity allows. We understand that it is very disappointing that NHS Borders are currently unable to meet this standard for Paediatric ENT surgery.”
Mr Richardson has voiced his disappointment at NHS Borders response, describing it as “wishy-washy”, after he was provided with several paragraphs in the form of a timeline of events.
He said: “My child has spent years suffering from this, would then have to spend two further years suffering, and the response is to tell me a timeline.
“Its simply them telling me the timeline of engagement that I already told them. How can it take 77 working days to tell me something that I already told them?
“For a hospital service that claims to be getting it right for every child, all those buzz words that are used, it is not something I have seen in practice.
“It’s the impact it has had on Elliot that is hard. When you are watching your child being sick night after night just because he has enlarged tonsils, not because he is ill, just to be then told that he has to wait so long, that is hard to take.”
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