Care Homes: Inspections

(asked on 8th September 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government whether Care Quality Commission staff are required to undertake a COVID-19 test before entering a care home to inspect it.


Answered by
Lord Bethell Portrait
Lord Bethell
This question was answered on 7th October 2020

There are no current plans to make Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspectors/staff eligible for regular asymptomatic testing as they do not meet the definition for the pilots that we are rolling out in Northamptonshire, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough.

The definition of those eligible states “‘An individual who visits care homes two or more times each week and where carrying out their role requires them to be within one metre of residents.”

The CQC’s inspectors/staff are not considered eligible for the testing pilot as they do not need to be within one metre of residents to carry out their role.

Our testing policy is based on clinical advice on relative priorities and available testing capacity and our testing policies continue to be reviewed on an ongoing basis.

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