Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he is taking to address regional variations in the quality of complaints advocacy in adult social care.

Each local authority is responsible for the quality of social care services it commissions. It is for individual local authorities to address any local concerns regarding complaints advocacy which they may provide.

There is no national body that has responsibility for the national oversight of complaints in social care. However, local authorities are required, pursuant to the Local Authority Social Services and National Health Service (England) Regulations 2009, to keep a record of each complaint received, the subject matter and outcome and timescales for responding. They are also obliged to make a summary of this information available to the public via an annual report.