CQC Sets Out Its Approach to Regulation During Local Government Reorganisation
On 22 July 2026, the Care Quality Commission published an update setting out how its regulatory activity will continue through a period of significant structural change across local government, children’s social care, integrated care boards and NHS England.
This is about local authority assessments, not provider inspections
It’s worth being precise about what this update actually covers. CQC’s statement concerns how it assesses local authorities’ delivery of their adult social care and children’s social care duties under the Care Act 2014, not the inspection of individual registered providers. If you’re a CQC-registered service, your own registration requirements, inspections and assessments continue under the existing framework and are not paused by this announcement.
What CQC has actually committed to
CQC says it recognises the scale of the challenge facing councils managing local government reorganisation (LGR), alongside children’s social care reforms, reorganisation of integrated care boards, and wider NHS England reform. It has committed to a “risk-based, proportionate and flexible” approach when deciding the timing of local authority assessments, weighing previous findings, available data and intelligence, and how long it has been since the last assessment.
The most concrete commitment in the update: CQC says it will not usually carry out full assessments of adult social care functions before a local authority’s vesting day (the date reorganisation takes legal effect), and these are unlikely to happen for around six months afterwards. In their place, CQC says it will lean on more targeted tools, focused assessments and assurance meetings, alongside the regular self-evaluation submissions local authorities already provide.
Why it’s still worth knowing
Even though this update doesn’t change your own inspection timetable, it’s a useful signal of how CQC is thinking about proportionality and regulatory pressure at a time when a large part of the sector, particularly anyone working closely with a local authority going through reorganisation, is dealing with genuine disruption. Expect some change to the rhythm of routine oversight conversations at local authority level even as your own registration and inspection obligations continue exactly as before.
CQC has said it will keep this approach under review as the impact of reform becomes clearer area by area. You can read CQC’s full statement on its website.