Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, on how many occasions the Care Quality Commission has (a) required registered care providers to produce a plan to (a) mitigate or (b) eliminate risk to the sustainability of their business and (b) arranged for, or required the provider to arrange for, a person with appropriate professional expertise to carry out an independent review of that business in each quarter since Section 55 (2) of the Care Act 2014 came into force.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has provided the following response.

The CQC does not routinely require adult social care providers to prepare risk mitigation plans. Instead, the CQC’s Market Oversight team aims to understand each provider’s short to medium term strategic plan, their individual business drivers and how they compare within relevant peer groups so it can consider this information alongside the CQC published ratings data. This approach allows each provider’s key risks to be established and discussed, typically with the provider’s Board. If the response or explanation from a provider is not satisfactory, the CQC will escalate discussions to include wider stakeholders such as the owners/financers of the provider.

The instruction of an independent business review is a last resort after all other avenues have been exploited. Since Market Oversight was launched in April 2015, the CQC has either directly instructed or been involved in existing work that was being undertaken on three separate occasions – Quarter 1 of the financial year 2017-18, Quarter 4 2017-18 and Quarter 1 2018-19. However, there have been at least a further 14 instances when Market Oversight has reviewed detailed management plans and engaged directly with a provider’s advisors to satisfy itself with the feasibility of a provider’s risk mitigation activity and, thus, the sustainability of the provider.

To protect the commercial sensitivity and confidential financial information submitted to the Market Oversight team, the CQC does not provide detailed information on specific providers in the scheme.

The Department published statutory guidance outlining local authorities’ roles and responsibilities in the event of business failure.

The Government is continuing to work with local authorities to ensure they have effective and up-to-date contingency plans in place.

The Department has worked with the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services and the Local Government Information Unit to develop further guidance on contingency planning for provider failure.