WIREDGOV

With local and mayoral elections today, 4 May, as well as a General Election approaching on 8 June, you may have heard about public bodies, like CQC, having to respect a ‘pre-election period’, which places certain short-term restrictions on what we’re allowed to publish and announce in the period before an election.

As a non-departmental public body, we also have a duty to be politically impartial – it is important that our conduct during the pre-election period, and at all times, does not call this into question.

The pre-election period began on Thursday 13 April for the local and mayoral elections happening in parts of the country, and Friday 21 April for the General Election.

While we will not be publishing new national reports during this period, we want to be clear that this will not affect our activities that we class as ‘business as usual’.

As the regulator of health and adult social care, our role is to monitor, inspect, and regulate services to make sure people receive safe, high-quality and compassionate care and to encourage improvement. This will continue.

This means we will be carrying 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. Also, we will continue to take enforcement actions against providers that are not delivering the care that we expect from them and that people deserve.

We will continue to publish our findings and judgements of services in our inspections reports, including our ratings of Outstanding, Good, Requires Improvement and Inadequate so that providers and the public have clear information about the performance of their local services and providers can make the necessary improvements.

For example, while we can’t confirm the exact dates just yet, we expect to publish judgements and reports on the following NHS trusts, and other organisations which we would usually produce a press release, during or around the pre-election period having already carried out our inspections:

• Ashford and St. Peter’s Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
• Cornwall Partnership NHS Foundation Trust
• Dorset Healthcare University NHS Foundation NHS Trust
• East Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust
• Gateshead Health NHS Foundation Trust
• Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
• Great Western Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
• Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust
• Homerton University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
• Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust
• Lincolnshire Partnership Foundation Trust
• London Ambulance Service NHS Trust
• Marie Stopes International
• Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust
• Mid Essex Hospital Services NHS Trust
• Northampton General Hospital NHS Trust
• Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust
• Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
• Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust
• Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust
• Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust
• Somerset Partnership NHS Foundation Trust
• South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust
• South West London and St George's Mental Health NHS Trust
• Southend University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
• Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust
• Stockport NHS Foundation Trust
• Surrey and Borders Partnership NHS Foundation Trust
• Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust
• Warrington and Halton Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
• Weston Area Health NHS Trust
• Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust
• Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh NHS Foundation Trust

Similarly, we will continue to publish inspection reports and judgements of adult social care and primary medical care services across the country throughout this period.

All of our inspection reports and judgements will be publicised in the normal way, including on our website and to the media, and we will continue to talk about the full range of our work, such as at events and in our newsletters.

Further information on what this period means for public bodies is available on the Cabinet Office’s website.