News from the Care Quality Commission: February 2026

Tell us about your experience of care

Our Give feedback on care service is available again after some development work.

The online form allows anyone to share their experience of health and adult social care services with us. Your feedback helps make care better for everybody. We use what people tell us to understand the quality of care they get from services.

Improvements to the online form include a better search function and filters, making it easier for you to find the care service that you want to give feedback on.

Give feedback on care

Share for better care

Our second Share for better care awareness week is planned for the week of 23 March 2026.

The campaign encourages more people to give feedback, particularly those more likely to have a poorer care experience.

We’ll be publishing more information on the awareness week on our website soon, including information about how you can get involved.

Share for better care

Join us! Work for CQC

CQC staff have a wide range of skills and work across many disciplines.

Current vacancies include:

Inspector – Adult Social Care
Inspector – Mental Health (Adult Community)
Inspector – Community Health Services
CQC Company Secretary

Benefits include generous leave entitlement, NHS or Nest pension schemes and a wide range of employee discounts.

Most roles offer flexible locations with the choice to be home-based. See the individual job listings for more information.

Browse our current vacancies
Working at CQC

Blog: Monitoring the Mental Health Act in 2024/25: challenges and opportunities for change

Chris Dzikiti, Interim Chief Inspector of Mental Health, has written a blog post reflecting on the findings of our recently published report, Monitoring the Mental Health Act in 2024/25, and the opportunities for change with the introduction of the revised Mental Health Act.

Chris writes that we are yet again highlighting a pattern of unequal outcomes for certain groups of people:

People living in the most deprived areas of England are 3.6 times more likely than those living in the least deprived areas to be detained under the Mental Health Act.
Black people are detained under the Mental Health Act at almost 4 times the rate of White people.
Some staff appear to lack the right skills to support autistic people or people with a learning disability, with people reporting feeling misunderstood or spoken to in ways that felt undignified.

Although he welcomes the revised Mental Health Act with its ambitions to improve the experience of all people who use and work in mental health care services, Chris flags that additional measures will be essential – including the provision of suitable community-based services as an alternative to detention, and investment in the sector.

Blog: Monitoring the Mental Health Act in 2024/25: challenges and opportunities for change

Professor Sir Mike Richards steps down as Chair

Professor Sir Mike Richards will be stepping down as Chair of CQC. He has agreed to continue until another Chair can be appointed.

Announcing his resignation, Prof Sir Mike said:

“It has been a privilege to serve as Chair of the Care Quality Commission, following my independent review of the assessment framework. I am extremely grateful for the trust placed in me.
“We have made progress on several critical improvements. I am particularly pleased that we now have specialist sector teams in place and will shortly be communicating the consultation response on the new assessment approach.
“However, it has become increasingly clear that the turnaround of the CQC – alongside the work required to establish it as the world’s leading health and care regulator – will demand a longer-term commitment as Chair than I am able to make.”

Professor Sir Mike rejoined us as Chair in March 2025 after he conducted his independent review of the Assessment Framework.

He had previously served as our first Chief Inspector of Hospitals until he retired in 2017.

New local authority assessments published

We publish reports that look at how local authorities are meeting their responsibilities to make sure people have access to adult social care and support.

Recent reports look at:

Each report looks at 9 areas spread across 4 themes to check how well each authority is meeting its responsibilities. Areas are given a score out of 1 to 4. A score of 1 is given when evidence shows significant shortfalls for this area, and 4 when evidence shows an exceptional standard is being met.