Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department has made an assessment of the potential merits of implementing mandatory reporting requirements for retirement homes on staff departures and replacements.

The Department does not currently mandate reporting requirements for retirement homes on staff departures and replacements.

The Care Act 2014 sets out local authorities’ legal duties when assessing people’s care and support needs. For workforce capacity, there is a duty to ensure that sufficient services are available for meeting the care and support needs of adults and their carers in the area.

Regulation 18 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 states that providers registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) must deploy “sufficient numbers of suitably qualified, competent, skilled and experienced staff to enable them to meet the needs of the people using the service at all times”. The CQC can take regulatory action if providers registered with them are in breach of any parts of this regulation, including if providers have an insufficient number of suitably qualified, skilled, and experienced persons deployed.

The Department continues to monitor adult social care workforce capacity, bringing together national data sets from Skills for Care’s monthly tracking data, the Capacity Tracker tool, and intelligence from key sector partners.