GP practice still waiting for ‘stuck’ CQC assessment a year on

A GP practice is among four providers still waiting on an inspection assessment report ‘stuck’ in the CQC’s IT systems, a year after the watchdog first revealed the issue. 

Last month, the watchdog announced it had reduced the backlog of assessments from 500 to four. 

And the CQC has now told Pulse that one of those providers is a GP practice, although it would not name it.

Chief executive Sir Julian Hartley and outgoing chair Ian Dilks first told MPs about the issue in January 2025, detailing ‘reports, going back some months, that are stuck in systems’.  

Of these 500 reports, 14 were for GP providers which had had a site visit over 120 days before. The CQC would normally publish a report within 50 days of the inspection. 

A CQC spokesperson told Pulse: ‘At the start of 2025, around 500 assessment reports were waiting to be processed. We have massively reduced this backlog over the year to just four assessments which have been shared with the Health and Social Care Select Committee, one of which is a GP provider.’ 

An independent review into issues with the watchdog’s IT systems, published in March 2025, concluded the assessments were irretrievable because of ‘poor programming of the system’ and a ‘lack of understanding of how to use the system optimally as a result of its complexity’. 

It was commissioned after a two damning 2024 reviews into the CQC’s operational effectiveness said the regulatory platform and provider portal was ‘functioning poorly’ and ‘contributing to major delays in report publication’. 

Pulse previously spoke to a GP partner at one of affected practices, who had waited over six months to receive a report following a reinspection. 

Dr Jamie Green told Pulse there were ‘significant’ issues with having in the inadequate rating ‘just sitting on your report’ due to the delay from the CQC.   

The practice’s application to become a Yellow Fever Centre was rejected ‘on the basis of the previous CQC rating’ and nurse vacancies have remain unfilled ‘as interviewees have cited concerns about our CQC rating’. 

The CQC has been working on rebuilding its reputation since the damning Dash review, published in 2024, which said its ‘significant failings’ had led to ‘a substantial loss of credibility’.

This has included reinstating the primary care chief inspector role, after the Dash review said the regulator lacked ‘expertise’.