Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of the cost to the Care Quality Commission of (a) inspecting and (b) rating private care providers who have not been rated in the last four years.

The Care Quality Commission’s (CQC) cost over the last four years for fee funded activity was between £220 million and £230 million. The CQC doesn’t break down the cost of activity between private and public providers, however, as shown in the CQC’s Annual report and accounts 2022/23, approximately 50% of the CQC’s income comes from private providers, as specified on page 16 of the report. The CQC’s accounts report for 2022/23 is available at the following link:

https://www.cqc.org.uk/annual-report-and-accounts-202223

The CQC’s fees are for the cost of regulation, rather than solely for the volume of inspection activity, therefore, the information is not available in the format requested.

We recognise that Dr Penelope Dash’s interim report says that updating ratings can be too slow. The CQC is working with Professor Sir Mike Richards and Professor Vic Rayner, the Chair of the Care Provider Alliance, to review longer-term improvements to their single assessment framework and how they use it. Other changes to the single assessment framework, such as how CQC score quality statements will allow the CQC to assess and inspect more services while ensuring their ratings are robust. Over the next four weeks the CQC will begin external engagement on aspects of the Single Assessment Framework that require rapid activity to ensure stakeholders are involved and shaping the CQC’s response to the recommendations.