 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.
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.
 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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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