Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will bring forward proposals to give the Care Quality Commission additional powers to sanction care providers which are persistently non-compliant with inspection regimes.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has a full range of enforcement powers that it can use where providers are not meeting the registration requirements.

The Department has no plans to give the CQC additional powers to sanction care providers which are persistently non-compliant with inspection regimes.

The CQC’s inspection regime provides a comprehensive assessment of provider’s performance against the fundamental standards. Following an inspection the CQC rates a provider on a four point scale running from outstanding, good, requires improvement and inadequate. This gives patients and the public a fair, balanced and easy to understand assessment of the performance of a provider.

Since 1 April 2015, any adult social care provider rated “Inadequate” by the CQC has been placed in Special Measures. Such providers will have six months to improve. If they fail to do so, their registration may be cancelled and they will exit the market.