Now that a general election has been called, you may have heard that public bodies like CQC have to respect a ‘pre-election period’ that places restrictions on what can be published and announced.
The pre-election period began at 00:01 on Saturday, 25 May for the general election taking place on 4 July.
We will not be publishing new national reports during the pre-election period, but we want to be clear that the pre-election period will not affect activities that we class as ‘business as usual’ which are permitted to continue under Cabinet Office guidance.
As the regulator of health and adult social care, our role is to monitor, inspect, and regulate services to make sure people receive safe, high-quality and compassionate care and to encourage improvement. This will continue.
This means we will be continuing to carry out inspections of health and adult social care services across the country, including planned and follow-up inspections, as well as those that are in response to concerns.
We will also continue to take enforcement action against providers that are not delivering the care that we expect from them and that people deserve.
Our assessments of local authorities adult social care duties will also continue to be delivered during the pre-election period, although we will not publish any reports of these assessments during this time.
We will continue to publish our findings and judgements of health and care services in our inspection reports. This includes giving ratings so that providers and the public have clear information about the performance of their local services and providers can make the necessary improvements.
For example, while we can’t confirm the exact dates, we expect to publish reports on the following NHS trusts, and other organisations during or around the pre-election period:
- Bedfordshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
- Birmingham Women's and Children's NHS Foundation Trust
- Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust
- Chesterfield Royal Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
- Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
- Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust
- Liverpool University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
- Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital
- University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust
- University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust
- University Hospitals of North Midlands NHS Trust
We will also continue to publish inspection reports and judgements of adult social care and primary medical care services across the country.
Please note, while we currently expect these reports to publish during pre-election period, we cannot confirm exact publication timings which are subject to editorial and quality assurance processes.
Our inspection reports and judgements will be publicised in the normal way, including on our website and to the media. We will also continue to talk about the full range of our work, such as at events and in our newsletters.
You can also read our separate update on our approach to integrated care system assessments.
The 2024 General Election pre-election period guidance has been published by the Cabinet Office. It includes information about how the general principles of pre-election guidance apply to arm's length bodies and other public bodies.