CQC update for primary care and community services

The independent regulator of health and social care in England Update from CQC 30 July 2026 A regular update for providers and professionals working in primary and community care Learning from practice: innovation in primary and community care Excellent care is happening in health and social care services across the country every day. Our new ‘Learning from practice’ case studies capture them, with the first examples focusing on what we’ve seen in GP practices. These are real examples of initiatives to improve people’s care, identified through CQC inspections and through Chief Inspector of Primary Care and Community Services, Bola Owolabi's ‘Learning from excellence’ visits. The aim is simple: help to spread good practice. If something is working well in one service, there's a good chance it can work somewhere else too.  Case studies featured include:  Breaking down barriers to cancer screening in the Nepalese community – how Shakespeare Road Medical Centre partnered with local community organisations to bring cancer screening awareness directly into Nepalese community spaces.  Improving attendance for childhood asthma reviews through multilingual support – how Primary Care Sheffield tackled missed asthma reviews using multilingual social prescriber support, Saturday clinics, and child-friendly invitations.  GP Clinical Assessment, Support and Education Service (CASES) – how Primary Care Sheffield's CASES service helps patients get the right care first time.  The Wall of FAME – empowering mindset change for better health – how one practice celebrates patients' health achievements to build a supportive community and motivate healthier choices.  Tackling digital exclusion – how Midlands Medical Partnership worked with its patient engagement group to reach patients being left behind by digital-first services.  More case studies are on the way to join the series, including from oral health, hospitals, mental health, and adult social care. See all published case studies Emily Miles appointed Chief Executive of the Care Quality Commission Headshot of Emily Miles We recently announced the appointment of Emily Miles as Chief Executive of CQC. Emily will join CQC from her role as Director General for Food, Farming and Biosecurity at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). She is expected to take up the role in October, succeeding interim Chief Executive Dr Arun Chopra, who will return to his substantive role as Chief Inspector of Mental Health. Emily brings significant experience of regulation, including as CEO of the Food Standards Agency overseeing food safety and protecting the consumer interest in the food system across England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Her selection follows a robust recruitment process led by Kay Boycott, CQC's interim Chair, with the involvement of the non-executive members of CQC's Board, representatives from stakeholder bodies and regulators, and Baroness Julia Neuberger, the government’s preferred candidate as CQC’s Chair. Read more Returning to good and outstanding GP providers  In March, we started a programme to re-assess NHS GP practices rated good or outstanding. This new programme means we can confirm whether ratings remain accurate without the need for a comprehensive inspection.   Every assessment is evidence of how we're keeping our promise to help keep people safe and improve their care. We also know general practice is working under significant pressure and have designed our approach to respect that. By focusing on fewer quality statements and only escalating to a full comprehensive assessment where we see significant change, these assessments balance the assurance we need to provide and the challenging context GPs work in.  We're also introducing an enhanced approach to these assessments where appropriate. That means routine clinical reviews can be carried out by GP Specialist Advisors or members of our Medicines Optimisation team, if needed. Your local inspection team will confirm if your assessment includes the enhanced element when they contact you, so you know what to expect.  We remain committed to engaging with the sector, including through the Royal College of General Practitioners and our Primary Care and Community Services Collaborative Forum, to make sure this approach continues to work for you.  For more information, read the full update on our website. Read more Update on our assessment activity We have now completed more than 9,000 assessments, reaching an important milestone ahead of our end of September target. This reflects progress in increasing our assessment activity and reducing waits for providers. It is an encouraging step as we continue to strengthen our regulatory approach and improve how we carry out our role. We recognise there is still more work to do. Improving our performance and providing a more consistent, timely and effective service for providers and the public remains a key priority. As part of our planning for the future, we are modelling assessment activity and demand over the next 18 months. This will help inform future inspection and assessment volumes and support a sustainable approach to regulation. Alongside this, we continue to improve our digital systems, registration processes and the overall experience of interacting with CQC. We will continue to share updates as this work progresses. Our focus remains on supporting high-quality care through effective regulation. Listening with intent, acting with purpose: reflections from our roadshows Earlier this year, we held a series of roadshows with primary care and community services providers, professionals and partners to hear their views on the future of regulation. In this new blog, Professor Bola Owolabi CBE, Chief Inspector of Primary Care and Community Services, reflects on the themes we heard from the sector. Discussions highlighted support for a greater focus on outcomes, people's experiences, equity and human rights, while also raising important questions about how outcomes are measured and evidenced consistently across different services. The blog explores how this feedback is helping to shape a more proportionate, improvement-focused approach to regulation. Read Professor Owolabi's blog You can also read a blog from Chris Badger, Chief Inspector of Adult Social Care and Integrated Care, in which he reflects on feedback from adult social care providers about the future of regulation and the themes that emerged from our roadshows, and a blog from Stuart Dunn, Director of Mental Health, on reflections from mental health providers. Other news Subscribe to our WhatsApp channel, where we share the latest news and updates on improving how we work. Annual update on the safer management of controlled drugs: Earlier this month we published our annual update on the safer management and use of controlled drugs. The report shares important insight on the use of controlled drugs in health care and adult social care services. The annual update draws on prescribing data, feedback from controlled drug local intelligence networks, and our wider inspection and regulatory work. The report will help people working with controlled drugs to strengthen the arrangements for their safe management and use. Care England has published a Good practice guide: Preventing choking deaths among people with learning disabilities. People with a learning disability are at particularly high risk of choking when eating and drinking, and the guide recognises the social, cultural and emotional importance of eating and drinking as well as the physical necessity. Developed by a collaborative group of providers, Speech and Language Therapists, risk experts, regulators and people with a learning disability, the guide is accompanied by a toolkit of resources to equip those supporting people with a learning disability at all levels – frontline staff, managers and at provider level - to support better recognition and oversight of autonomy, choice and risk. We've updated the current statutory notification 17 (SN17, death of a detained mental health patient) notification form in both the Word document format and on the provider portal. The new form is shorter and simpler to make it quicker and easier to submit. The change took effect on 17 July 2026. All SN17 notifications should now be submitted using the new form, either as a Word document or the online provider portal form. If you have questions about any of these changes, please contact us.

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