Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to remarks by the chief executive of the Care Quality Commission (CQC) on 1 February that the CQC has “lost its way” with inspections, what plans they have to set a date for a date for the CQC to provide the public with reliable and up-to-date information on inspections of care homes, hospitals and other facilities.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has been open about the fact they need to do much more to be the strong, effective regulator that people who use health and care services need and deserve. A key area for improvement is to ensure that the CQC can give the public up-to-date information about services.

It is undertaking rapid changes to the way they work to increase the number of assessments they undertake, to provide updated ratings. However, it is clear the CQC has a lot to do to improve its performance in how it undertakes assessments and provides ratings. The CQC has reported progress with reducing the number of completed assessments stuck in its IT system and some of these will result shortly in updated ratings. It is not feasible to say when all care homes, hospitals and other facilities will have up to date information because of the number of providers in each sector.

The public should continue to use the CQC’s existing ratings, together with other information on the CQC’s and the provider’s websites and should look out for updated ratings.

Between 2023 and March 2024, CQC rolled out a new IT system, as well as structural changes within the CQC that made it difficult for its inspectors to do their jobs. This has meant that, while they have continued to focus on protecting people from poor care, often in response to information from the public, the number of routine inspections that resulted in award ratings fell dramatically. A revised way of working was introduced in December 2024 to address these issues.