Hospitals: Inspections
(asked on 9th October 2026) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many and what proportion of inspections of NHS hospitals by the Care Quality Commission were (a) announced and (b) unannounced in each of the last three years.
Under the Care Quality Commission’s (CQC’s) current assessment methodology, not every assessment of a National Health Service hospital involves a site visit.
The following table provides the number and proportion of announced and unannounced NHS hospital site visits, rather than assessments, recorded by the CQC in 2024, 2025 and 2026 to date:
Year | Announced site visits | Unannounced site visits | Total site visits | Additional assessment activities with no site visit recorded |
2024 | 68 (74%) | 24 (26%) | 92 | 6 |
2025 | 186 (72%) | 71 (28%) | 257 | 134 |
2026 | 114 (49%) | 119 (51%) | 233 | 214 |
Total | 368 (63%) | 214 (37%) | 582 | 354 |