Responsive · KLOE 2
Listening and responding to feedback
Are people supported to give feedback and raise concerns, and are they confident that action will be taken as a result?
CQC wording, secondary and specialist hospital care draft v0.6, pages 41 to 43.
Draft, not the current assessment framework
CQC's secondary and specialist hospital care draft v0.6, published March 2026. The current quality statements remain in use.
CQC draft scope
What this proposed KLOE covers
Scope of this key line of enquiry and topic areas include:
- Feedback and complaints
- Advocacy and support to raise concerns
- Carer support
How would this apply to your service?
The draft applies one framework across secondary and specialist hospital care, but useful evidence depends on your service and people.
Source: CQC, Hospitals (secondary and specialist care) assessment framework, draft v0.6, 19 March 2026, pages 41 to 43. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
CQC draft rating characteristics
How the draft describes each rating
These are CQC's draft characteristics. CQC says rating characteristics guide judgements, they are not a mechanical checklist.
Outstanding
- There are consistently high levels of constructive engagement with people who use services, including people in all equality groups. Services are developed with their full participation as equal partners. Where children and young people use the service, they and their parents and carers are engaged in a meaningful way.
- Rigorous and constructive challenge from people who use services, the public and stakeholders is actively encouraged and seen as a vital way of holding the service to account.
- People, their families and carers are meaningfully and regularly involved in reviewing how the service manages and responds to complaints and concerns. Their lived experience, insights and expectations directly shape improvements, ensuring the complaints process is transparent, accessible, culturally sensitive and continually strengthened. The service values this involvement as essential to learning, accountability and delivering the highest possible quality of health care.
- The service uses innovative approaches to gather feedback from people who use services and the public, including people in different equality groups, and there is a demonstrated commitment to acting on feedback.
- The service is taking a leadership role in quality improvement, by seeking opportunities to learn from improvements made elsewhere, and by proactively sharing its learning with other services.
- Investigations of incidents and complaints are comprehensive and the service uses innovative ways of looking into concerns, including the use of external professionals to make sure there is an independent and objective approach.
Good
- Staff take time to listen to people and give them the opportunity to share concerns.
- People, their families, carers and advocates know how to give feedback about their experiences of care. They can do so in a range of accessible ways.
- People, their families, carers and advocates feel confident that if they make a complaint or raise a concern they will be taken seriously and treated compassionately, with no fear of detriment.
- The ability to raise concerns, make complaints and give feedback is supported through access to information, translation and interpretation. This could include making reasonable adjustments or supporting people in a culturally-informed way.
- Staff investigate complaints and concerns openly and thoroughly, and within a suitable timeframe.
- People are kept informed about how their feedback was acted on. Where improvements are required as a result, people (including their families, carers and advocates) can be involved in shaping the solutions and measuring the impact.
- Learning from complaints and concerns is seen as an opportunity to improve the service. The provider can demonstrate where improvements have been made as a result of learning from reviews, and staff can give examples of how they have incorporated learning into their daily practice.
- Staff recognise that people need to have access to, and maintain links with, their advocacy and support networks in the community, and they support people to do this.
- Leaders know of and act on any disproportionality in complaints and concerns by protected characteristics and/or themes, such as reasonable adjustments.
Requires improvement
- People do not find it easy to raise concerns or make complaints, or are worried about doing so. Complaints and concerns cannot be made in completely accessible ways.
- When people make complaints or raise concerns, the service may not always take their views fully on board, investigate them thoroughly and in a timely way, or change practice to improve.
- The complaints system may be managed inconsistently and there is little evidence of the learning being applied in practice within the service.
- Staff do not always readily give timely and accessible information about advocacy and further support.
- People occasionally suffer discrimination, detriment and harassment if they complain.
- There is insufficient engagement with people who use services, or insufficient attention to appropriately engaging those with particular protected equality characteristics. Feedback is not always reported or acted on in a timely way.
Inadequate
- People feel unable to express their views about the care and support they receive from the service. The provider’s complaints and concerns system is unclear and inaccessible.
- People, their families and carers are not given suitable information about, or access to, advocacy and support.
- Complaints are not dealt with in an open, transparent, timely and objective way. The service’s response to complaints suggests a defensive attitude.
- People may suffer discrimination, detriment and harassment if they complain.
- There is minimal or no engagement with people who use services, the public or external partners. The service does not respond any feedback.
- Staff are unaware or are dismissive of what people think of their care and treatment.
- People’s feedback is inappropriately managed and acted on. The service is unable to provide examples of improvements made as a result of feedback and complaints.
Want to know how your service would fare?
Book a mock inspection run against the draft KLOEs, or call 020 8090 5346 to speak to one of our experts.