Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to help improve the Care Quality Commission’s registration process times; and what assessment he has made of the potential impact of those processing times on the (a) capacity and (b) continuity of care services.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) does not record registration data in the format requested, for the timeliness of registration application processing by constituency.

Dr Penny Dash published her report into the CQC in October 2024. The Government accepted her findings and has since been supporting the CQC to improve rapidly, as well as holding it to account for its performance.

The Department meets regularly with the CQC to review performance. The volume of registration applications and reducing the backlog of registration applications over 10 weeks old is one of the four key priorities discussed at these meetings.

The CQC has been making tangible progress. For all registration application received as care providers and registered managers in England, the percentage of applications older than 10 weeks has reduced significantly, from a peak of 61.1% in May 2024, to 32.9% in July 2025, a reduction of 28.2%.