Care Quality Commission
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What do the forthcoming elections mean for CQC?

With local elections on 3 May, you may have heard about public bodies, like CQC, having to respect a ‘pre-election period’, which places certain restrictions on what we’re allowed to publish and announce in the period before an election. What we can continue during the pre-election period is our ‘business as usual’ activity – delivering our regulatory role.

As an arm’s length 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 is due to begin on Thursday 12 April for the local elections happening in different parts of the country on 3 May.

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 action 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, we expect to publish reports on the following NHS trusts, and other organisations during or around the pre-election period:

  • Liverpool Women's NHS Foundation Trust
  • Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
  • Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust
  • South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust
  • Aspen Centre
  • Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust
  • Doncaster and Bassetlaw Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
  • The Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust
  • Hull Royal Infirmary
  • The Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
  • Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust
  • Norfolk Community Health and Care NHS Trust
  • East Cheshire NHS 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.

Please note, while we currently expect these reports to publish during pre-election period, we cannot confirm exact publication timings which are subject to editorial and quality assurance processes.

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, where you can find the 2017 guidance for arm’s length bodies. The 2018 guidance is yet to be published by the Cabinet Office.

Channel website: http://www.cqc.org.uk/

Original article link: http://www.cqc.org.uk/news/stories/what-do-forthcoming-elections-mean-cqc

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