The Care Quality Commission has lost its way

There is a profound crisis of confidence in the Care Quality Commission (CQC), the statutory regulator of health and social care services in England. In June, its chief executive, Ian Trenholm, abruptly left the organisation with less than a week’s notice, after six years in the role.1 Less than a month later, the Department of Health and Social Care published a damning report on the CQC’s performance from a public body review chaired by Penny Dash.2 The review had already been established in May as part of an ongoing public body review programme,3 but the department took the highly unusual step of publishing an interim report after just two months’ work. Its final report will follow in the autumn.

The interim report found “significant failings in the internal workings of CQC, which have led to a substantial loss of credibility within the health and social care sectors, a deterioration in the ability of CQC to identify poor performance and support a drive to improved quality—and a direct impact on the capacity and capability of both the social care and …