Challenging a CQC inspection outcome: points to note for care providers

The recent case of Seabrooke Manor Ltd v CQC demonstrates the high hurdle care providers must overcome to succeed in a judicial review challenging CQC inspection findings and related ratings.

Case overview

Seabrooke Manor is a care home providing personal and nursing care to its residents. Following an unannounced CQC inspection in June 2023, Seabrooke Manor’s overall CQC service rating dropped from “Good” to “Requires Improvement”. Seabrooke Manor applied to judicially review the CQC’s decision-making, arguing that, on what was before the CQC inspection team and after the internal quality assurance and factual accuracy process, the CQC could not rationally determine that the safe and well-led key questions should be ranked "Requires Improvement" and that they could only rationally be determined to be "Good."  The Claimant asked the Court to quash the three “Requires Improvement” ratings and replace them with “Good”. Consequently, the overall rating would also have to be changed to “Good”.   

Her Honour Judge Walden-Smith dismissed the claim, finding that “the CQC were entitled to reach the findings that it did, acting on the basis of the information obtained from the inspection and through the complex internal quality assurance and accuracy process that was undertaken” [paragraph 102].  

You can read the full judgment, Seabrooke Manor Ltd, R (On the Application Of) v Care Quality Commission [2024] here. 

Comment

As stated by Her Honour Judge Walden-Smith at the start of her judgment, “the court will always be cautious in overturning the good faith factual assessment and evaluative conclusions of an expert regulator. That is particularly the case where, as here, the regulator is operating in an area where public safety is of primary concern” [paragraph 10]. 

Despite acknowledging that the CQC made some errors in the drafts of the inspection report, Her Honour Judge Walden-Smith found that the CQC’s system of inspection, internal quality control and the Factual Accuracy Check provided “a complex system of checks which inevitably mean that the original draft of any report will be considered with care” and that in this case “the reasons given by the CQC for their various findings were both intelligible and accurate” [paragraph 45].  Although the ratings in this case were accepted to be “borderline”, there was nothing irrational about the decision to rate the domains as “Requires Improvement” rather than “Good” [paragraph 100–104].

Although the claim was dismissed, the judge’s remarks on appropriate relief in cases such as this are insightful:

“Even if I had come to the conclusion that the ratings of "Requires Improvement" ought not to stand on the basis of this public law challenge, it would not have been appropriate for this court to replace the findings of the CQC with its own determinations that the safe and well-led key questions be rated as "Good". The only appropriate remedy would have been for the determinations to be quashed, the report to have been removed from the CQC's website and a further inspection and report process to be undertaken on Seabrooke Manor by the expert body who has responsibility for judging the various key questions.” [paragraph 98]

If you require support with challenging a CQC inspection or rating contact our specialist team to discuss how we can help you.

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