Non-payment of fees

It's important to understand we may cancel your registration if you do not pay your fees.

The provision for us to charge fees is set out in Section 85 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008. Non-payment is grounds for cancellation under Regulation 6 of the Care Quality Commission (Registration) Regulations 2009.

We will always give you every opportunity to pay before we consider enforcement action. However, our enforcement policy states that in some circumstances we may go straight to cancellation.

Non-payment of fees risks reducing our ability to carry out our functions. This could put people using services at risk. We have a robust process for recovering unpaid fees:

• Our finance team will make a number of attempts to contact you to request payment.
• Once our initial debt recovery efforts have been exhausted, our finance enforcement team will take over the task of recovering any unpaid fees.
• They will review all the information we hold to ensure that you have had every opportunity and support to pay your fees.
• Our finance enforcement team will send you a final letter requesting payment. It will give clear information on our next steps if we do not receive payment from you. It will also ask you to tell us why you have not paid the fee.

If your account remains outstanding after we’ve made every reasonable effort to secure payment, our finance enforcement team will begin the process of cancelling your registration. The team will take account of:

• the value of fees outstanding
• any explanation you make in response to the final letter requesting payment
• any other relevant factor.

If you are facing challenging financial circumstances and are unable to pay your invoice, contact NCSC.Finance@cqc.org.uk.