What Does a General Election Mean for the CQC?
Now that a general election has been called, public bodies like the Care Quality Commission (CQC) have to respect a ‘pre-election period’ that places restrictions on what can be published and announced. The pre-election period began at 00:01 on Saturday, 25 May for the general election taking place on 4 July.
The CQC will not be publishing new national reports during the pre-election period. However, they want to be clear that the pre-election period will not affect activities that they class as ‘business as usual,’ which are permitted to continue under Cabinet Office guidance.
As the regulator of health and adult social care, the CQC’s role is to monitor, inspect, and regulate services to ensure people receive safe, high-quality, and compassionate care and to encourage improvement. This will continue.
This means they will be continuing to carry out inspections of health and adult social care services across the country, including planned and follow-up inspections, as well as those that are in response to concerns. They will also continue to take enforcement action against providers that are not delivering the care that is expected from them and that people deserve.
Their assessments of local authorities’ adult social care duties will also continue to be delivered during the pre-election period, although they will not publish any reports of these assessments during this time.
They will continue to publish their findings and judgements of health and care services in their inspection reports. This includes giving ratings so that providers and the public have clear information about the performance of their local services and providers can make the necessary improvements.
The CQC will also continue to publish inspection reports and judgements of adult social care and primary medical care services across the country. While they currently expect these reports to be published during the pre-election period, they cannot confirm exact publication timings, which are subject to editorial and quality assurance processes.
Their inspection reports and judgements will be publicised in the normal way, including on their website and to the media. They will also continue to talk about the full range of their work, such as at events and in their newsletters.