Sir Julian Hartley has now been at the helm of CQC for approximately 4 months and it’s still early doors to make any definitive opinions about progress in his incredibly challenging role.
At the beginning of 2025, Julian reflected on his reasons for joining CQC, to ensure ‘effective regulation is at the heart of a health and social care system that delivers the outcomes people need.’
In contrast to previous leaders at CQC (who played lip service to listening and partnership working) Julian has been proactively seeking views from CQC colleagues, providers and stakeholders to start agreeing on what the CQC vision should be and how to get there. This has become a piece of work called, The CQC Way and will eventually form a charter that describes how CQC will work to deliver its purpose and return to being a good regulator.
Julian appears to be doing exactly what he said he would do. He has spoken about the importance of working in partnership with colleagues, providers and stakeholders to co-design effective and manageable regulation, and is working on immediate improvement actions such as publishing delayed assessments, increasing the number of assessments, clearing the registration backlog and acting promptly on information of concern and notifications. CQC sadly lost their way and internal colleagues and providers were desperate to get back on track. Julian has listened to these pleas and although it will take time, plans are gradually taking shape to make the vital and necessary changes to become an effective and credible regulator once again.
Consultation events have taken place and provider roadshow events are planned from April to July. From these events, feedback will be used to develop a charter to describe how CQC will deliver its purpose and what we can expect as a member of the public, provider, stakeholders and internal CQC colleagues.
The Technology
The extremely expensive technology known as the regulatory platform has now had an external review. This evidenced that it was only delivering 5% of what it should have. This is clearly a very costly and extremely disappointing outcome. Those involved with the development of this system are long gone from CQC leaving a tangled web behind them for others to unravel. CQC employees had raised concerns right at the outset of the platform being launched in October 2024. It has been a difficult time to navigate this technological nightmare and CQC staff are now hopefully seeing a glimmer of light now at the end of an exceptionally long and dark tunnel.
CQC Leadership
Leadership is taking shape in the form of 4 permanent chief inspectors including Dr Arun Chopra who has been appointed as the first ever Chief Inspector of Mental Health.
Finally, Professor Sir Mike Richards is confirmed as the new Chair of CQC. This can only be a positive move. The outgoing Chair, Ian Dilks, is stepping down and must be reflecting on how things went so horribly wrong.
Those that saw the challenges posted to Ian Dilks at the Health and Social Care Committee would have seen the incredulous reaction of committee members on how things had gone so terribly wrong. It is hoped the new Chair and existing board members are considering what must change in the future to avoid a repeat of another catastrophic failures and remembering the importance of interrogating and checking the information they are been given to ensure CQC is on track.
Let’s hope that very soon, the public, providers and stakeholders start to see improvements.
Everyone needs to work in partnership to ensure people get high quality care and support to ensure meaningful and full lives right up to the very end. Ultimately, we all want a health and social care system that we can be immensely proud of and that those working in those services are respected, appreciated and rewarded for the extremely hard work they undertake.