"Independence, accountability and trust": Three qualities for 'healthy regulation'

At a lecture earlier this week, our Chief Executive David Behan told a packed audience of government advisors, improvement partners, regulators, public representatives and others of the importance for CQC to be independent, accountable and trusted.

The lecture, "Healthy regulators - Improving regulation in health, social care and other public services" was hosted by the Institute for Government and included Rt Hon Stephen Dorrell MP (former Secretary of State for Health and Chair of the Health Select Committee) and Shona Sodha (Head of Public Services and Consumer Rights from Which?) as panellists.

In this, David Behan set out the importance of independence, accountability and trust in allowing CQC to take an objective and rigorous look at the health and adult social care landscape and to report on our judgements in a fair, consistent and robust way. Also, these qualities enable us to set clear expectations on what good care looks like and when improvements need to be made.

We are doing this already with our tougher registration checks, by introducing specialist and expert-led inspections, by rating services on what matters most to people who use them, and by recommending NHS trusts (and from next April, adult social care services too) be placed into 'special measures' when we find inadequate care.

You can watch the lecture on the Institute for Government's YouTube channel and we have produced a short pamphlet, which summarises David's key points.