While we are working on our full plan, we have been delivering rapid improvement work across 5 areas:
Strengthening our leadership
We have appointed Sir Julian Hartley as our new Chief Executive, who will take up his role from 2 December, and will soon be starting recruitment for 4 permanent Chief Inspectors. Collectively, this will strengthen our leadership across the health and social care sectors we regulate. We will also be working on how we align our assessment teams under the Chief Inspectors and around areas of sector expertise.
Having the right expertise
We have invested £2 million to support resourcing our assessment workforce and increase inspection activity. We are also piloting approaches to ensure that assessments are led by people with expertise in the specific sectors they are assessing.
Reviewing our assessment framework
We are looking at where we need to make changes to our methods. These include:
- discontinuing scoring at evidence category level
- discontinuing the use of previous ratings to produce scores
- reviewing how we use quality statements for each assessment
- reviewing how we use professional judgement when producing a final rating.
We will also be working with Professor Sir Mike Richards and members of the Care Provider Alliance (CPA), which is chaired by Professor Vic Rayner OBE, who will take forward a second phase of activity. They will explore and provide recommendations on the future of our regulatory assessment. This important work will inform both immediate and long-term decisions and will align with our own engagement activity.
Updating our approach to relationship management
We are piloting approaches to improve the way we manage relationships with health and social care providers. This work is across all sectors, and we will evaluate this in early 2025 to decide how to apply the most effective approach.
Delivering improved tools for providers
We are working to identify improvements that are needed for the provider portal, to ensure it works well for all users and meets the needs of different types of providers. We will also be introducing improved customer support to help any providers that have problems accessing the portal. We have removed registration functionality from the portal to give providers an improved experience of registering with us.
We are co-designing a new clear and accessible provider handbook to ensure our guidance meets the needs of all who use it and is available in the right format. This includes the development of new ratings characteristics.