Overview
The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is a 'prescribed person' as defined in the Public Interest Disclosure (Prescribed Persons) Order 2014. We are therefore required by the Prescribed Persons (Reports on Disclosures of Information) Regulations 2017 to provide an annual report on disclosures of information that we received during the period 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024 (2023/24). We publish this report to comply with our statutory reporting obligations as set out in the 2017 Regulations.
Our objectives and statutory powers
We are the independent regulator of health care, adult social care and primary care services in England, established by the Health and Social Care Act 2008. Our main objective is to "protect and promote the health, safety and welfare of people who use health and social care services" (s.3(1)).
Section 3(2) of the Act requires us to perform our functions to encourage:
- improvement in health and care services
- providing health and social care services that focus on the needs and experiences of people who use services
- the efficient and effective use of resources in providing health and care services.
Section 4(1) of the Act states that, as well as other issues, in performing our functions, we must have regard to:
- the views expressed by or on behalf of the public about health and social care services
- the experiences of people who use services
- the need to protect and promote the rights of people who use services
- the need to ensure that any action we take is proportionate to the risks we are safeguarding against
We do not have powers under the Health and Social Care Act 2008 to directly investigate complaints from people, or concerns from workers when speaking up. Instead, we use data from information received regarding concerns to inform our regulatory risk and decide on our regulatory response.
Workers speaking up to us
During 2023/24, we received and processed 20,901 cases involving information of concern from workers who were speaking up to us. Of these, we considered 15,919 to be qualifying disclosures.
A qualifying disclosure (as defined in Employment Rights Act 1996) is any disclosure of information which, in the reasonable belief of the worker making the disclosure, is made in the public interest and tends to show that one or more of the following has happened:
- a criminal offence has been committed, is being committed or is likely to be committed
- a person has failed, is failing or is likely to fail to comply with any legal obligation to which they are subject
- a miscarriage of justice has occurred, is occurring or is likely to occur
- the health or safety of any individual person has been, is being or is likely to be endangered
- the environment has been, is being or is likely to be damaged
- information that suggests any of the above points has been, is being or is likely to be deliberately concealed.
Qualifying disclosures
Of the 15,919 qualifying disclosures we received and processed from 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024, we took further regulatory action on 15,291 disclosures.
Sometimes, we are unable to act or respond directly to workers who raise qualifying disclosures (sometimes called whistleblowers). This may be because we have insufficient information from the disclosure, or because our review and assessment does not identify any regulatory issues. We did not take further regulatory action on 628 of the protected disclosures we received during this period.
Summary of our regulatory actions
We decided to take further regulatory action for 15,291 qualifying disclosures. The following is a summary of the action we take:
- 2,248 of the qualifying disclosures we received were categorised as safeguarding priority 1. These cases indicate that people using services have experienced, and are at continuing risk of, significant abuse or neglect, and we are the first statutory agency to receive the information. When we receive safeguarding priority 1 cases, our regulatory action is to make a safeguarding referral to the local authority.
- 5,728 of the qualifying disclosures we received were categorised as safeguarding priority 2. These cases indicate that people using services have experienced significant abuse or neglect, but this is not continuing, and people are no longer at risk, or the local authority is already aware of the risk. We then use the qualifying disclosure information to inform our regulatory risk. Depending on our assessment of the regulatory risk, we will either:
- use the information to inform a current or future assessment of a service
- decide to bring forward a planned assessment
- request specific information from providers.
- 7,315 of the qualifying disclosures we received contained information of concern about a service, but did not contain safeguarding information. We again used this information to inform our regulatory risk. Depending on our assessment of the regulatory risk, we will either:
- use the information to inform a current or future service assessment
- decide to bring forward a planned assessment
- request specific information from providers.
The impact of workers raising protected disclosures to us
When workers raise qualifying disclosures with us, we consider this as a valuable source of information, which we use to inform the regulatory risk and take appropriate and timely regulatory action.
Our main objective is to "protect and promote the health, safety and welfare of people who use health and social care services" (Health and Social Care Act 2008, s.3(1)).
In 2023/24, the 2,248 safeguarding priority 1 cases that workers raised with us enabled us to fulfil this objective by taking appropriate regulatory action. Therefore, raising qualifying disclosures with us, supports us to achieve our objective to keep people safe.